Dreaming In Monochrome

So. Here we are, back in my hometown.

So far, I have to say, it has pretty much sucked donkey balls.

Let’s start with the apartment.

What we were promised:

A condo, rent free, until we were employed and able to pay rent. Alone. Much was made to do about how awesome the place was, how we were going to love being on our own, yadda. The apartment is furnished and has all of the cooking/eating supplies we would need, so we didn’t have to wait for the snow to stop in Colorado (the highways out of CO are the problem.) to get our things because there was plenty here!

The Reality:

SM’s brother D still lives here. He has been smoking in his room and on the balcony. The smell was overwhelming. He is a slob and a know it all, so we get to deal with the messy coffee spills in the kitchen (along with sprouted onions and brown garlic and BONES on the counter tops), the questionable gunk in the fridge which may or may not be strawberry related, and his constant “mansplaining” everything under the sun to me. SM’s Mom has successfully yanked the rug out from under us and doesn’t seem to understand why we don’t want to live with D. She said he would be leaving at the end of January, then took rent money for February from him and is saying things like, “We’ll just see how it works out…”

We were told, to our faces, that “Half the rent is better than nothing!” when we pressed as to when D would be leaving. So basically unless we can start at least paying half the rent, they don’t see why D should have to leave, even though THEY (SM’s Mom and her boyfriend) have complained to us about D for months.

D has trashed several things in the apartment – including the TV, the filter for the kitchen faucet, the trash can in the kitchen, and somehow got the remote for the gated entry “stolen” because someone cut a hole in his rag top. A small little hole they apparently stuck a tentacle into to get the remote out. He also asked their Mom why *he* had to move out, and why couldn’t SM and I just find a place.

Pots and pans? What? Dishes? Oh yeah, paper plates. Random drinking glasses that are probably dessert dishes in their day jobs. The dryer doesn’t work. Well, it does, sort of. It goes around, but suddenly won’t dry anything in a reasonable amount of time ever since I put the vent hose back on after SM’s Mom knocked it off and didn’t tell anyone.

The furniture is stained and dirty and obviously just whatever they didn’t want to take with them to their new place. Also- we were told the landlady knew we were going to be living there, then were told to keep it on the down low and if anyone asks we’re just visiting SM’s Mom.

Other irritations:

The apt is situated so that both of our rooms are next to each other, instead of in the “room mate style” that we were told was the lay out. This means that whenever D leaves his room, he has to walk right past our door and can see directly into our room and specifically at us sleeping on the bed. While we were solving this by keeping the door shut, we realized quickly that Murphy is too much of a cat box diver to have Ernie’s facilities in the same room with us. (Also – that cat has a toxic ass) So we moved the cat box out to the laundry room, figuring the cat would be okay in the closed room all night since he wasn’t using the box in the middle of the night.

Well, I’m up at 5 AM because the cat needed to go out. Little did we know, but D had not only dumped our still damp laundry on the couch, but he closed the laundry room door so even though I tossed Ernie outside of our room to do his business, he still couldn’t get to the box. Our new solution was to take down the ugly curtain in our room and put it up across the door. Which would work fine except that the rod is too long so it sits at a weird angle and it has already fallen on my head.

SM’s Mom still has a key to the apt and to the mailbox. She comes by and picks up the mail every day, and we are just supposed to trust that she’s not taking our mail with her. I see a PO box in our future.

I am really stressed out and have been operating at an anxiety level of about 8-9 on a scale of 1 – 10. The smell and the filth on our first night here resulted in a melt down of epic-ness in the parking lot of WalMart, of all places. Shaking, crying, and general “Oh Goddess what have we done!?!?” feeling of total, utter, mistake. I couldn’t believe my poor cat had been living here for over a week in this, walking on the awful carpet.

I feel stupid for believing that this time, this time SM’s Mom wasn’t going to pull a fast one on us. I feel led on and lied to, and just generally depressed about our situation. The sad reality is that we blew our money getting here, and had barely enough to buy food after having to buy cleaning supplies just to be able to sleep here the first night. I feel trapped and stuck and more than a little panicked about that.

I don’t blame SM for our situation. She is just as frustrated and unhappy as I am and is on her Mom like white on rice trying to get her to fix the situation. It is just really hard for me to even think about doing anything but hiding under the covers and crying when I feel like this.

I was outside walking Murphy this morning when he wiggled out of his collar and took off after a pit bull. Lucky for me, the dog was friendly and the owner had control of him. I was embarrassed that I had lost control of my dog, and gave him a stern talking to as we walked back. When I walked in and saw our laundry dumped on the couch, and then realized it was still damp, the first thought that hit my mind was that I was sorry we ever left Texas.

I don’t really know what to do with that.

That situation was bad, but this feels worse.

I feel like we jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with food. I think a lot of people do, and I admire people who can eat without really thinking about what they’re putting in their mouth – or the flip side, people who *do* think about what they are putting in their mouth but who don’t have to worry about things like blood sugar levels and other things that food might be doing to their bodies.

My wife is a vegetarian. She’s been a vegetarian for over half of her life and has fought against ignorance of what a vegetarian is (”So you eat fish? I know vegetarians who eat fish…”) and the ridicule of people who think being vegetarian is odd, stupid, insane, or a combination of all three. I won’t even touch on people who claim vegetarian and then happily eat chicken or beef without blinking an eye.

Last night she suffered a pretty big blow to that when she found out that a lot of the food she has been eating has been slowly and silently hurting her. She has hypothyroidism, and some vegetables are detrimental to allowing the thyroid to function if the thyroid is already broken. So all of that broccoli she’s been eating (at the urging of her doctor, I might add) has done more damage than anything else. It’s shaken her entire world up, and made us both rethink our food.

I’ve always had food issues. I was a fat kid at the mercy of my father, who would humiliate me every chance he got. He would often tell my sister not to grab seconds, unless she wanted to be fat like me. He went so far as to take away my plate when he thought I had eaten enough. Sometimes that enough was most of my dinner, sometimes it was a few bites. It all depended on how he was feeling when he passed me eating at the kitchen table. It wasn’t often that he was home for dinner, but when he was he always made a comment or did something.

Now I’m a fat adult who hoards food and always feels like I’m not getting enough. You can’t trust me to divvy up a dish, because I’ll always give myself a little bit more because somewhere in my mind an alarm is going off that I won’t get enough to eat. I finish off food I don’t even like, because I’m afraid there won’t be anymore. I wolf my food down as fast as I can because I’m afraid someone is going to take it away, even though no one has taken my food from me since my mom kicked my father out.

I don’t blame all of my food issues on my father. Some of them stem from being raised by a woman who lived through the Great Depression, who instilled in me a fear of empty cupboards and running out of food, even though we were never poor enough to have to worry about that. Some of them come from the basic fact that I love food. I’ll try anything once, or twice, and once I like something I tend to crave it for weeks on end, wanting to eat nothing but.

Since being diagnosed as a diabetic, I’ve changed my eating habits a bit. I’ve pretty much cut out all red meats from my diet, but I will have an occasional steak from time to time, especially if I am feeling run down from lack of iron. I have also pretty much cut out all pork products, despite a life long love affair with bacon. Being a kid who would eat anything helped me grow into an adult who is adventurous with food, so I don’t begrudge my Gramma or Mom for making me at least try everything on my plate. The only food I’ve ever had an instant dislike to is beets, and even then I’ll try them again every so often just to make sure I still find them disgusting. (I do.)

Now our little family is in full on reorganizing mode. We’re researching and talking and looking for good foods to help repair my Beloved’s thyroid, and still maintain a good balance for my blood sugar. It’s a hard road ahead, but one we’re facing together. This, like all things, will be overcome in time. And, like all hard things, I just wish didn’t have to happen, especially to my love. I’d rather it have happened to me, that my world was over turned and that I was the only one who had to rethink my entire outlook on food and life. It’s easier for me to just put my head down and plow through something. I don’t like seeing her hurting and frustrated, and although I am grateful for everyone who is wishing her well I kind of wish the people who just jot by and tell her to start eating whole cattle would just shut the fuck up.

And now it’s time for dinner.

So I’m going back to school.

That’s not the important part of this, however. The important part is that, to return to school, I also have to return to Las Vegas, since the college there will take me back with little pain and trouble, and the colleges here in TX were bristly about accepting my decade old credits.

As the time of our departure grows closer, I find myself teary eyed and suddenly hyper aware of exactly how much time we have before we aren’t living here anymore.

Change is hard for me. I don’t like it. I don’t seek it out. I tend to burrow down, grow roots, set up house and settle in tight – even if I am really, really unhappy. It always feels easier to stay put, than to take off into the unknown and hope for the best. I’m more than willing to open myself up to the Universe and allow it to lead me, and I am always excited about a new path, however when it comes to actually physically moving my home I get antsy. I worry about things. Everything. From the gas money to the weather to the help we’ll need to get things accomplished. I worry about the people we leave behind in a physical sense. I worry about our things in storage.

I worry.

Right now, even though every bone in my body and every cell in my brain tells me we need to go, that it’s the right thing to do and I will be happy in the long run for doing this now – even though all of that is in there too, I feel scared and sad and worrisome.

I worry that my Mom will be lonely. I worry that Havoc will be depressed and sad when she is here alone when Mom is babysitting. I worry that something Bad will happen because I wasn’t there to stop it, because Anakin isn’t here anymore to stop it. I worry that we’ll have to leave our stuff in Denver anyway. I worry that my nephew will forget me and SM. I worry that the nephews and nieces we left in Denver have forgotten us. I worry that my sister will need me and I will be too far away to help her. I worry that my Mom will do something stupid like climb on a table and fall and break her back or snap her neck because I wasn’t there to just do it for her and she was too stubborn to ask for help.

Even as I worry, I hear the Voice of Reason in my head tell me that Bad Things can happen even if I am here 24/7 for the rest of my life. I hear it tell me that MY life is just as important and valuable as anyone else’s and I am allowed to go live it. I hear it remind me that all of the nephews and nieces will always remember me and SM because we’re not leaving the planet forever – there are still planes and cars and trains and telephones and the mail to connect with and see them whenever we want. And I know that my Mom will do Stupid Things and there is nothing I can do about it.

I know I’m choosing my life, my path, my future by leaving. I’m choosing my marriage, the room for us to be together and the freedom to go where we want by leaving. I know it will be good to have space, it will help to be my own person. I know that a month from now I will be missing them, but I will be okay in our new routine.

I also know that my heart is hurting, I feel like crying every few minutes, and I am frustrated to the point of irritability most of the time. I know I feel like I need to hold on to my Mom and my sister because I feel Time slipping through my fingers. I know I have residual guilt, and that I have an underlying fear that I will leave and it will be the last time I see them. I know that is ridiculous.

We’re leaving to start a better path. I know that.

It doesn’t make the leaving easier.

I guess it’s sort of funny that I started this decade in Texas, and here I am again.

Looking back, I don’t know if I was thinking ten years down the road. I know that I was unhappy here then as I am now, perhaps for somewhat different reasons, but the outcome was the same. I wanted to leave Texas, and I wanted to leave it as soon as possible.

I started the decade in a relationship that had just begun but was already showing signs of distress. I had no idea I would spend another five years with that person, and that by the end of the decade I wouldn’t even be speaking to her anymore. The company I worked for ten years ago closed up all of their brick and mortar stores not long after I left there, for a job in a branch of a company that also no longer exists. (The branch, not the company)

Ten years ago I didn’t even know some of the people I most cherish now. These years have brought me family and friendship and love as well as the terrible heartache and pain. Ten years ago I was calling Gramma to wish her a happy new year. I missed her so much, and all I could think about was wanting to go home to Las Vegas to be with her. I should have listened to my gut then, instead of the selfish will of my then partner.

Ten years ago Anakin was a big strong dog, just out of his puppy body but still a big puppy in his ways. Murphy’s parents weren’t even born yet. Ernie was still cranky as hell, though.

My sister hadn’t yet met the man she would eventually marry. I had no idea that right then, back in Las Vegas at the book store I always hung out at, the woman who would completely change my life was sorting magazines right near the spot I would sit and read at. My back injury was years away and probably still somewhat preventable. I was going through a rocky patch with my father, and he hadn’t yet told me that he was living with H. I was 23 years old and thought I knew everything.

I’m 33 now and I realize that I’ll never know everything, but I can keep learning and hope I know enough to get me through. I’m married to that girl who worked in the book store, even though we missed each other numerous times in those ten years. Anakin is gone, Gramma is gone, my relationship with my father is over, and my sister is married with a child.

It was a hard decade for everyone. The Twin Towers came down, an election was stolen, we went to war for no reason than to appease a bruised ego, the space shuttle exploded. People lost their jobs, their homes, their lives. Not just here, but all over the world. It wasn’t all bad – nothing ever is. It just felt like it, for a very long time. This decade is limping out into history with two black eyes, a couple of broken ribs, and a split lip. Not just for me, but for almost everyone I know.

I had a chance to grow and learn, to change and be changed, to love and be loved in return. I found parts of my family that I didn’t even know I was missing, people I now cannot imagine my life without. I married my little red headed girl, someone who has taught me how to be unafraid, who has allowed me to heal, who has shown me that it’s okay to be frightened and excited at the same time. I learned a lot of lessons – some of them hard and rough, others easy and obvious, but they were all important and necessary. Most of all, I remembered how to love myself.

I know that for me the new year is a new path. I’m on a road of healing, both physically and spiritually. It’s not going to be a rose lined path with butterflies and moon beams – there’s work involved and it’s not going to happen overnight, however I am prepared for the work, ready to invest the time, and feeling good about where I’m going and who I’m traveling with. I feel hopeful, and motivated, and just ready for a fresh beginning.

I don’t know what the next ten years will bring, but I do know that I am not afraid. I’m hopeful and wide eyed with wonder, and ready for the Universe to bewilder me. I’m embracing the Random, the Unknown. I’m ready for the next Adventure, the new chapter, the blank page.

I’ll be 43 at the end of this new decade. I wonder where I’ll be, what I’ll be doing, and how my life is progressing. Ten years is a long way off. Ten years is a long time, full of chances and directions and things to see and do.

And it will be over before I know it.

I guess I’d better get started.

Happy New Year, everyone. May the next ten years of your life be filled with all that makes you happy.

It’s been three years since I last spoke to my father.

I saw him two more times after his birthday dinner when he flipped out at me, screamed at me, threatened me, and completely humiliated me in front of a packed restaurant. Once was the night I took my Mom to the emergency room, because my sister called him and he bullied his way into the ER. The second time was when he paid for my Mom’s car to be fixed. Other than those two times, I’ve been effectively out of reach for him, despite the emails and the voice mails and the supposedly tearful messages passed on from my sister and mother.

Yesterday was his birthday. He turned 57 years old. My sister and my Mom say he asks about me, that he misses me and that he doesn’t know why I won’t speak to him. I ask them if they tell him why I won’t speak to him, and they tell me that it’s up to me to tell him, and with that they neatly avoid any responsibility for what is happening, what has happened.

In the past three years I have been angry with him, missed him, wondered about him, and thought about reconnecting with him. The anger subsided, the missing passed, I stopped caring about what or how he was doing (even though my sister and Mom filled me in almost every chance they got) and I’ve let the feeling of reconnection go. I don’t feel like his presence in my life would do any good. The last three years of my life have been, for the most part, happy and fulfilled. We’ve been poor and had hard times, we’ve had other people in our lives turn their backs on us and we’ve lost friends we thought we knew – but we’ve never felt like someone was buying us like I used to when he was in my life.

For the most part, I’ve forgotten about him. He, for all intents and purposes in my life, is dead. I know that one day he will actually pass away and I will have to deal with whatever feelings will come from that, however I plan on crossing that bridge when I get there. I know that by choosing to keep him out of my life I choose to be left out of family gatherings that he is invited to, and that things will be awkward and uncomfortable, but there is nothing I can do about that which doesn’t hurt my soul.

I have come to terms with the fact that despite his constant abuse of me for my entire childhood, that my mother and sister will never remove him from their lives. They will never stand behind me and force him to make amends or make him suffer the loss of his family because of what he’s done. He will get to enjoy seeing my nephew grow up, and will always been seem to be the good guy. Maybe one day G will come to me and ask why we are never around when he is, why his cousins never see my father. If he does, I won’t lie to him and let him think that I’m unreasonable or mean. What he does will the knowledge will be up to him at that point.

It hurts that they don’t support me. I’ll admit that sometimes it makes me want to leave them behind as well, and pretend I’m an orphan. In the end I don’t, if only because I know that they are doing what they need to do to survive and that they do love me, even if they can’t be there for me in the way I need them to be.

People say that you choose your family, and that sometimes it isn’t the one you’re born into. I know this is true for me. I have brothers and sisters all over the world, people who would do anything they could for me, who listen to me and commiserate, who love me and support me. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive, loving wife than SM, someone who has helped me sort through all of this dark space in my heart. She has healed me by allowing me to repair myself, always being there with a helping hand or a gentle word when I need it most.

I know I wouldn’t have had the strength to stay strong in my resolve to not speak to him had it not been for SM and my chosen family. I know that eventually I would have been worn down with the “but he’s your fathers” and the “you can’t stay mad at him forevers” that were coming my way and would have gone right back to talking to him, probably with an apology.

The funny thing is that I’m not mad at him anymore. I feel sorry for him. He is alone now that his wife has left him. He only has one daughter who will speak to him. He has alienated the rest of his birth family. I guess his money will keep him warm.

And yeah, he is my father, but that doesn’t give him the right to treat me as he has. It took me a long time to realize that, and now that I have I can’t ever go back to that. I can’t ever pretend that it is okay for him to treat me as property. I won’t.

The decision to place myself and my emotional well being first is one I won’t ever regret.

Three years later, and I am finally at peace. I am finally healed.

I believe in Astrology.

Not so much horoscopes and the 1-900 late night commercials, but in the dominating traits of the sun signs and how my particular sign(s) react to them.

I know, for example, that although I feel an underlying kinship to Capricorns due to my own Cap rising, that in general I feel uncomfortable around them – especially if they are on the greedy, self absorbed side like my father. Immature Caps feel dangerous to me, and they tend to know exactly how to wound me when they want to.

I know that for the most part, I have to hold onto my hat around Aquarius. Those guys will spin my head right around with all of the thinking they do, the changes of mind and plans on the fly.

I’m drawn to Virgos, and rarely want them to leave once they let me get close. Something about their logic and order gives me peace inside, and more often than not I feel a sense of Home around them. SM has a Virgo rising, and I can feel it when it comes out. I feel safer when she’s at the wheel when her Virgo is up and awake.

Pisces does something to me that I cannot fully explain. They are like magnets for me, pulling me in with their powerful tidal ways. They give off this electricity, a deep hum that vibrates something down in the darker parts of my soul. I’ll forgive a Pisces just about anything, and will tolerate more from them than I ever will from anyone else. I read somewhere that Pisces and Cancer are one of the perfect matches in the Zodiac. Pisces helps Cancer be more open and social, and Cancer will build a loving, safe home for Pisces to swim to. They don’t tell you that sometimes this match is like fire and gasoline instead of sugar and cinnamon. I’ve been crushed by a Pisces and have found myself crushing them in my big clumsy Cancer claws. They make me want to protect them, to build a little safe home for them.

There are all general, sweeping statements that may or may not play into how my personal interactions with people born under these signs develop. I’ve met some really awful Scorpios, but I adore two of them very much. I tend to adore Taurus as well, but in a family sense. And of course, I have one Libra that is very close to my heart.

I’m a cusp, born on the Summer Solstice, smack between Gemini and Cancer. It’s hard to be around me sometimes. I can be extremely moody and then suddenly be happy and distracted by shiny things as if nothing ever happened. I tend to laugh at inappropriate times, and then get bruised when my jokes don’t go over well. SM likes to joke that there are four of us in this relationship – her two Fish and my Twins. I think my two signs tend to even each other out for the most part. I still have the home body, “let’s make a nest” Cancer skills, but I have enough Gemini “hey, let’s PARTAY!!” in there so as not to brood and pick apart every little thing inside my shell. The Gemini tends to offend other Cancers at times, I guess because they feel the fellow crab, then don’t understand when I make light of everything. Full Geminis tend to get bored fast with my Cancer side, not understanding why I need time away, why I don’t want to go to the party or partake in the big shared lunch. It’s a balancing act on the best days and on the worst I turn into a crying, angry mess.

SM is a cusp as well, half in Aries and half in Pisces. It’s an interesting combo, to say the least. I’m continually amazed when that Ram bursts out and she is beyond assertive and into aggressive, pawing at the ground and showing her horns. She always has this fire burning just under the surface – it just turns into an inferno when she’s got her Aries on.

I think it helps that she is a cusp also, someone who understands the trials of the duality of signs. She understands what it’s like to be drawn one way and then suddenly have your gears shift as if the Moon herself grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the side. It’s good to be married to someone who understands the attraction to the ocean, another water baby who gets lost in the shower and dreams of sand between her toes.

I’ve been feeling that draw to the ocean as of late. It is where I go when I need to feel grounded, when I need to feel like the Mother is watching over me. I feel very out of sorts, bruised and wounded and wanting to scurry back into my shell and stay there for a long time. I feel sad and scared and lonely here, despite that my Mom and sister are here. I feel like SM and I are drowning in a tidal pool, stuck in an endless swirl, looking for release out into the rest of the sea.

I know it’s going to be okay. I know, eventually, we’re going to find a way to Home.

I know the tide will pull us out to safety.

There comes a point when you just can’t take it anymore. A point where bending no longer works, when you’re so twisted out of shape from trying to keep bending that you can feel the cracks begin to form in the creases. You feel the stress points starting to give way, and finally, you reach it.

Your breaking point.

It might be a quiet breaking – alone in your room when you realize that you cannot go on living like this anymore, and make a decision to change your life. It might be a loud, crashing explosion – sitting across the table from your abuser as he screams at you, calls you an asshole, and your life flashes in front of your eyes and finally your anger bubbles to the top and says, “Never again.” And sometimes it’s a gradual erosion of the wall you keep trying to repair, to keep up the illusion that everything is OK and that you really are OK with the way you’re being treated.

I’ve had epiphanies of all three kinds. I’ve silently sworn to myself that I won’t be allowing this to continue, I’ve cried hot tears of shame and embarrassment and promised myself that things would change, and I’ve growled and snapped when I just can’t take it anymore.

Last night was a growl and snap moment. I’d reached the end of my rope after being accused of not having a sense of humor and of being an irritable baby because I didn’t find the fact that my Mom was planning on sending my father a piece of my art pleasing, and that when she said, “He would be proud of you,” I responded that I didn’t care how he felt about me. She tried to say she was joking, and then did some obvious back peddling, claiming it was for someone else. Her earlier actions of refusing to tell me who it was for and then saying, “Will you send it off?” and replying with “I figured you would be that way, I’ll do it myself,” when I asked who I was sending it to all point to the fact that she was indeed going to send it to him and then regretted saying it when I reacted the way I did.

I’m not sure what she expected me to say. Did she honestly think that I would be happy to have something of mine sent to him on the sly? I’m not even sure why she had to act the way she did about it. She could have just said, “Oh, I’ll send them out,” and then done whatever she wanted with it. It feels disingenuous that she made a point to be strange about it.

I don’t think I am being unreasonable here. She bought them, and I told her that they were hers and she could do with them what she wished, but I won’t pretend that I am enthused that she’s sending them to him. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t bother me that I’m treated as though *I* am the one who has done things to splinter this family. I won’t pretend that everything is forgiven and it’s all OK now. It’s not OK. It will probably never be OK.

I will admit that I do miss him sometimes. I miss the happy memories I have of him, the times when I felt loved by him without feeling like that love came with a price. I miss how goofy he could be, how he laughed so hard at cat macros that he started to cry.

I don’t miss him enough to allow him back into my life. Not at this point, possibly never. I know what that means, and I know that it will make things awkward at times. I am not ashamed of how I am handling the situation. I am not being unreasonable. I am not the one who needs to make amends. I’m done being the one who bends.

Last night made me realize that I cannot go on like this. It isn’t the only reason, but it was the proverbial straw on the proverbial camel’s back. SM and I talked long into the night about where we were going, what we were doing. We’ve made decisions, discussed arrangements.

We’re in the boat together. We’re holding hands, and leaping.

May the net appear.

Every year around this time, people seem to get a huge bug up their collective asses over the term “Happy Holidays”. Every single year some asshole starts flipping out in line because the cashier decided to wish someone a happy holidays instead of saying Merry Christmas.

Being in Texas this year, I just had the distinct displeasure of having a buck toothed cowboy rant for thirty seconds about how it’s NOT “Happy Holidays” and it’s NOT about ANYTHING but Christmas because it’s all about JESUS.

I’ll admit, it takes a lot to offend me, but fucking a that did it like a shot.

I don’t know what it is about people like this, who seem to think that the ONLY reason ANYONE celebrates ANYTHING in December has to do with their religious day – which, please. Christmas is about GIMME GIMME GIMME more than anything else and if they want to claim it has a holy day then they have a LOT more to worry about than someone wishing someone else happy holidays. SM comes home daily to tell me about yet another jerk who made a point to say “MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!” in a loud voice at her or some other shopper.

Despite the fact that there are many religions in the world, and that most of them have some holiday in December that deserve the same amount of respect as any other one, some people just need to shove their religion in your face and pretend that they are celebrating the “reason for the season”.

Well, to be frank, the reason for the season is axial tilt, if you want to get real about it.

The holidays bum me out.

The lights, the trees, the incessant music singing about bells and lights and merry thoughts. Even more than those things, the fucking commercials made me want to stab someone in the eye with a sharp object. If I have to see one more faked scene with some guy giving some bland Every girl a long thin box with some ridiculously expensive (but now ON SALE) piece of glittering crap, I am seriously going to lose it on the next Santa I see.

It wasn’t always like this. I used to love the holidays, used to be big into the Ho Ho Ho and whatnot. I used to be excited at the beginning of October – an excitement that lasted right up until February. Now, not so much. In fact, I’d sort of prefer it if the year skipped from September right into March, thanks.

I know that Gramma not being here is part of it. The holidays were her time. She did most of the cooking on Thanksgiving, and her joy at Christmastime was the best part of the season. I felt like I belonged somewhere, shared in some universal secret of family and togetherness that I just haven’t been able to get back. Maybe it’s because the last time I saw her was around Christmas. Could be.

It could be that, combined with the fight that ended my relationship with my father, has just made it hard for me to care. Even as I type that, I know part of that isn’t true because while I feel numbed, I also feel sad and disconnected. I feel Apart in some fundamental way that I can’t describe even as it weighs me down.

I guess I have some expectation of the happy family I used to believe I had. Even with my father being an asshole every single holiday, I still felt happy. I still felt loved and cared about and needed. To be honest, in general I feel that way still, but not really so much with my family. I feel like they moved on without me, left me behind, and just keep me around because they don’t have the heart to just tell me to go away. I find myself keeping quiet more and more, because I just don’t want to go to the trouble of hearing how wrong I am about everything. I don’t feel like being looked at like I have three heads, don’t feel like explaining myself seven times just to be told I’m totally, utterly, and immeasurably incorrect and not allowed to have any feelings other than what everyone else is feeling.

I’m anxious about this holiday season. I have nightmares about my father showing up unannounced. I’m pretty sure he won’t, but somewhere deep down there’s this voice warning me. I’ve already resigned myself to knowing that I’ll probably never see my nephew on his birthday, since my father will be there. I know it is my choice not to see him, however I also know that I have zero support from my birth family about it, so it is kind of hard to be reminded over and over again that despite everything he’s done, it’s him they would rather have at birthday parties and the like. He’s more important than me to them.

This is turning into a big wah wah cry baby entry and that’s not what I intended when I started it.

This year I decided to try and not let the holidays bum me out so much. I dusted off the tree and decorated the house a bit, even put up lights outside. I didn’t even get overly sad when my Mom came home and said she didn’t see them when she came home. (For the record, she said they weren’t lit when she came home. Despite all rational evidence to the contrary, she claims they just weren’t lit.)

So far, for the most part, it’s working. I don’t feel quite so disconnected from the world around me. I still feel stings here and there when I’m reminded that their lives went on quite nice without me here, and that once we move away it’ll go back to normal. I’ve come to realize that guilt is easier to handle when it’s a couple hundred miles away.

At any rate, I feel like I’m coming out of something. That somewhere in the hardened armor of my heart, a little plant has pushed to the surface, leaves unfurling. I know SM planted that seed long ago when we met, and has been patient with me as I work through the metric ton of baggage I’ve been carrying around with me since forever.

It’s hard, but I’m working on it.

I went to a job interview today.

It was raining, so I rushed out the door sooner than I had planned, and forgot my pen. I try to always bring a pen with me, because inevitably you need a pen and usually there isn’t one to be found and whomever you might talk to is usually reluctant to give up their pen. I’ve had my pen stolen more than a few times, so I understand the reluctance.

(As an aside – the pen stealing forced me to find a low quality pen to allow people to “borrow” when they came by my desk. My “good pens” were tucked away, coming out one at a time, and lived in my shirt pocket when not being used.)

The facility isn’t too far from my house, but with traffic made worse by the rain (and the idiots who cannot drive in it) I arrived without a minute to spare. I gave my name and who I was supposed to see, and the receptionist looked at me with a blank stare. Someone off stage called out to give me an application to fill out, and that I should sign in. I looked down and sure enough, no pen. I asked Blank for a pen, and she looked all over the place before finally pulling one out of the very full cup of writing instruments and handing it over. She gave me a smirk, as if she knew I wasn’t giving it back.

I filled out my application as quickly as I could, sort of frustrated that I was now “late” for the interview because of the rain. I could hear large machines letting off steam and pounding metal somewhere deep in the building. It reminded me of my last job, and made me sad for a moment.

The fun started when I handed my application back in. The Blank Receptionist took the pen, but not my application, telling me to hold on to it. I smiled and turned away from the small window where she was. The voice from before called out that they needed it, get it from me, and Blank called, “Sir?”

If I had a dollar for every time someone called me Sir, (or dude, bro, buddy, man, etc) I probably wouldn’t need this job, or any other job. It’s something I live with, and frankly it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes it can be helpful to be mistaken for a male, especially when it means a threat backs away or that we get taken seriously at the auto parts store. I don’t go out of my way for it, but I don’t get offended when it happens, so when she called out “sir” I just answered to it. I handed her my application through the little window, smiled and thanked her.

I overheard some chatter from the other side as I sat down in one of the two broken down brown chairs in the small waiting room. The voice of Blank became louder as she walked back toward the open window. She said, “Oh yeah? Well it looks like a boy!” There was some murmuring from whomever she was talking to and she responded, “Lord! Forgive me!” This was followed by laughter, which faltered off when I guess she realized the window was still open, or when the plant manager emerged from his office to escort me back. As I walked through the door into the office proper, I finally saw who Blank was speaking to. Another woman sat behind a sad, fake wood cubicle. She looked me up and down, really slow like, in that way that people will look at a small disobedient child or perhaps at a messy dog. I wanted to say something, but I was here for a job that I am needing more and more with each passing day, so I looked away and followed the plant manager into the back room to talk over my resume.

He, for the record, didn’t seem to give a damn what I was wearing or what I looked like. He was more concerned with me asking for two dollars more than they advertised the job for, and if I could pass a drug test. The pay might be negotiable with my level of experience, and I assured him I don’t do drugs.

In general it tends to be harmless when people mistake me for a male. Usually it is waitstaff, or some other “I deal with the public all day” profession. Most of the time I just smile and nod and ignore it. They didn’t mean any harm, and it would just make us both uncomfortable by pointing out their mistake. Besides, the likelihood that I’m ever going to see them again is pretty low, and even if I did the chance of us suddenly becoming good buddies is even lower.

A few times in my life the mistaken identity has taken a darker turn. The last time I lived in Texas I was followed to my car three different times. Once was a co-worker, asking me why I dressed the way I did and didn’t I know that fags go to hell? He warned me that a manager of ours was also a fag and that we could share our little basket to hell. I told him to go jump in a lake, with more four letter words, and then went right back in and reported him to our store manager. He was fired and banned from the mall property, and the manager he mentioned walked me out for the next month.

The other two times were completely random strangers, bent on first finding out if I was really a guy and then finding out why I looked “like a freak”. One guy pushed me up against my car and threatened to “teach me” how to “be a woman”. Another just yelled “DYKE!!” at me and threw some trash in my direction. The first guy left without making good on his promise, and the other just kept walking like the chickenshit that he was.

The reality of my situation is that I *look* queer. There’s no getting around it, even in the land of she-mullets and women who spend more time in overalls than their husbands. It’s the way I carry myself, the way I walk, the way I talk. It gives me away, especially around SM. I could bind my chest and hide the two large dead giveaways to my female sex, but I would still give off that vibe. There is no mistaking me for a straight woman – not by a long shot alone but when I am with SM it is like a blinding, flashing light above my head. I could ask SM to call me by a more masculine name. My given name is sometimes a starting point for the questioning looks. I’ve been flat out told that my name is “a girl’s name”, a “female name”, and therefore could NOT be my name even as they stare at my driver’s license with that very name and my picture right there next to it.

Even as a child I was an obvious queer. People tried to hang the label of tomboy on me when I refused to wear a dress and played in the mud and ran around without a shirt on. They tried to scoff and said things like, “Oh, it’s just a phase…” and assure my parents with, “She’ll grow out of it.”

Well, I’m going into my 34th year and I haven’t “grown out of it”. If anything, I’ve grown into the person I always was inside, and have finally cast aside all of that other bullshit that society keeps trying to shove down my throat. I’m a woman and I wear my hair short, clipped with barber’s clippers by my wife in our kitchen. I’m a woman and I wear big heavy boots that clomp when I walk – men’s boots with steel toes and worn leather. I’m a woman and I wear jeans from the “men’s” department. I’m a woman who is married to another woman and my wife wears dresses and fishnets and high heels and fuck yes she’s hot. I still like to play in the mud, I still ooh and aah over trucks, I still don’t wear dresses and I’m still a woman.

I’m not an “it”, I’m not a “freak”, I’m not a weirdo or a monster that wants to gobble up children in the middle of the night. I’m a Butch. I don’t conform to anyone’s dress code, because I wear what I like and what makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. I cut my hair the way *I* like it cut, without regard to how women are “supposed to” and “should” wear it. I’m on the opposite side of “should” and “supposed to” and all those other boxes people try to stuff me into, and I won’t apologize for it.

I will not say “I’m sorry” when I use the restroom and you have a problem with my short hair. I will not apologize for buying shoes that feel good and look good to me. I will not apologize for the wedding ring on my finger because your backwards religion doesn’t allow for Love to live outside of your “holy” book’s narrow focus. I will not apologize for kissing my wife in public, for holding the door for men AND women, for wearing those big, clompy boots every where I go. I will not give you absolution with a shamed smile when you make a fool of yourself and show your ignorance by calling me names, or laughing at the way I look. I will not be shamed into pretending I’m something I’m not.

I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of how I look. I am not ashamed of who I love. I wear the word Butch on my heart like a banner of courage, a mark of honor, a scar of experience. My wife is a Femme and she is not for you to stare at, to gawk at, to belittle because she chooses to have me on her arm.

This is who I am. This is how I live. This is how my Goddess made me, Blessed me, Loves me.

And I will not apologize for it.