Tag Archives: love

Understanding masculinity

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I have been thinking about social dynamics I’m seeing as I manage to be around real-live people in Scotland more often and as a weirdo autistic person a lot of how I figure out what I know and make it coherent in my brain is by writing it out. But that gets super socially tricky! So how can I check if my assumptions/understandings are even vaguely close to reality? Can’t ask people directly because they will lie ~75%* of the time. So I like a long ramble about stuff that is associated in my brain. Is it kink related? Sometimes and often in a challenging to perceive way without a great deal of context. It’s part of why I am so long-winded. In order to understand A you have to hear about B and C and in order to understand B you have to know about D and E and F and… I’m like a Star Trek language.

I moved a lot of times as a child and young person but I often reference the aunt and uncle who raised me. It gives the shape of the relationship a casual reference frame that other people will understand but it’s also misleading. They didn’t get to raise me, not really. Sometimes my mother and I lived with them and sometimes I lived there alone in between other housing. I rarely was in their house for longer than a few months and when I was my mom was there.

I think of them as the people who raised me in large part because they both had incredibly strong personalities and they were the most frequent cultural touchstones of my early life. Until I was in high school they were the people I had spent the most time with including school peers because I changed schools so often. I didn’t watch people go through phases and change and grow and develop.

I watched my auntie and my uncle. And the two of them are very interesting models for me as I go on through my life and I deal with other people. Before I describe them in more detail I am going to say that I love them very deeply. I know that they were often the only reason I was not in a violent or dangerous situation. When I describe them I will use words that are very blunt and will be read as denigrating and negatively judging them. I’m not trying to be hateful. I am talking about my people and where I come from. I am honest about what it was. I am reporting what I was told. I am repeating what I was told to believe. I am just not using the same words they used because people lie all the fucking time.

My uncle was basically a walking stereotype. He was a redneck with a bad temper and a giant entitlement complex. He never got enough to feel satisfied with his life. Not in his work life, not in his children, not in his marriage, not in his house, not in his hobbies, not in his electronics, not in the travel he did, not in the vehicles he bought.

Fuck, this is the best place for my favorite uncle story. So, he really liked camper vans and RVs. He is why I will never buy one. So, once he had a medium-sized camper van so I guess it was around 30′? He decided to buy… something I was unclear on what but he wanted to drive to go buy something and it wouldn’t fit in any of his current vehicles. It couldn’t be attached to the top/back and it wouldn’t fit inside.

So he used a fucking chainsaw to take off the top, sides, and back down to a level where it looked like a child’s crayon drawing of a “truck”.

I wish I had pictures.

Guess what he learned REALLY FUCKING QUICKLY? The right angles at the top angle of the RV are kinda important for the structural integrity of the entire awkward rolling box. Yeah. He held it together with rope. Rope. He tied the fucking thing closed. He managed to get whatever it was home. That RV sat off on a corner of the property until his next open heart surgery when his sons kidnapped it and took it to the dump. I can’t remember if that was the same time when it was a total of 16 giant dumpster truck loads to take away most of his hoard. There was still a lot of shit.

He had a whole bunch of heart surgeries. He tried every kind of heart implant. Single, double, triple, quadruple bypass surgeries. I think he went under the knife six times? They started taking loads away during the second surgery. This war went on for almost 40 years. I think the 16 truck load surgery was number four or five? He retaliated every time and acquired more stuff. He financed his shopping by repeatedly refinancing the house and taking out equity. They bought a $40,000 house in the 1960’s and the last time I spoke with them about their financial life auntie was working full time in her late 70’s because someone has to pay the mortgage and all three of her kids live with her and are disabled.

There was no such thing as enough for him. No one ever respected him enough. No one deferred to him the way he wanted. No one stopped what they were doing to give his words weight when he spoke. He wanted to be deeply respected and obeyed because his edicts were simply right. Because tradition says so. Because the Bible says so. He stopped using the Bible against me when I read the entire fucking thing when I was 13 so I could debate every.single.reference and explain to him why he was fucking wrong.

I was his favorite kid until my niece moved in with them because my sister is a fucking loser. My niece was three and much more susceptible to bribery and being bought so he put all his positive energy into her after that. He had a hierarchy of how he treated people.

1: Princess
2: Himself
3: Women he was flirting with and he wanted the positive attention
4: Men he thought of as high status and he was sucking up to them
5: Men he had no particular use for
6: His wife
7: Most girls
8: Women he had no particular use for
9: Men he actively disliked
10: Women he actively disliked
11: Girls he actively disliked
12: Boys

Let me tell you it was interesting gathering data for that set of understanding as a child. This is all I know of calculus.

That is to say once I was demoted from Princess we had a very different relationship and we showed one another a lot more sharp edges. He wasn’t mean to me most of the time and in terms of how he treated boys he was incredibly gentle and affectionate with me most of the time–definitely while I was Princess. I will absolutely admit that my draw to barrel chested men with a slightly Elvis twist in the front of their hair and strong side burns comes with the equally strong understanding that it is going to be an interaction stuffed full of conflict.

Is this where I am going to be called a man hater? Hey you can’t say I hate men… I married a man! Enh, see what I did there? Yeah. Uncle was absolutely full of ways to weasel out of labels. He wasn’t a racist! There is (name) down the road and he has never called him a (bad word). He really wished I would stop reading so damn many books.

I feel some regret that I didn’t get to thank him one last time for raising me right at the end, but I told him many times before that. He is one more brick in the wall of why I have intense feelings around displays of gratitude.

Relationships are not always simple. They are not “good” or “bad”. People are not “good” or “bad”. I think people do good things and shitty things and striking the balance is hard. I think that there are ways that men have a tough time in the world and I’ve watched some pieces of that pain right up close. I also have a carefully cultivated and culled group of men I am close with–people who have all done their therapy homework before I got there. People who understand their own damage and can figure out how to not be shitty at other people because of their own pain.

Yeah, that pain matters. That pain needs attention and care and support and you need to understand that the focus of attention has to move around a group and it won’t always be you. Not because of a statement about you being less worthy than other people. That’s not the point.

Life is hard all over. Sometimes I am not going to preen and serve the man in the room. Put your big kid panties on and deal with your problem for yourself.

I say this with more flow and force at this point in my life because I have bounced off this dynamic with an awful lot of men who I don’t happen to love deeply and feel enormous gratitude to them for saving my life. Yeah. Conflict. Because even with that deep well of gratitude and love I also said, “You have legs. Why are you asking a woman to go get you a drink? Have you become paralysed since I last stayed in the house?”

Yeah. I didn’t stay the Princess. I was thirteen when my niece moved in. I was not an easy person for a deeply ignorant, bigoted, racist, misogynistic, lazy hoarder person to love.

But holy shit can you see a whole string of hoarders in my friends circle for the rest of my life. I keep some of the traits and challenges. I just can’t handle the whole package anymore.

Cause it’s not about any of these one things. Cause any one of those labels diminishes the person he was very much. He showed up in emergencies and helped neighbors. He was giving and loving in his way. He was often fun. He got me to memorise the lyrics of every song he had on 8-track tapes. We had us some times. He snuck me treats and he cuddled me. He is the only man I have had a completely non-sexual highly tactile relationship with.

Like, that’s a weird thing for me every time I think of it. I have never had another non-sexual highly tactile relationship with a man. Outside of uncle men have fallen into four categories for me: sexual or just some serious flirting relationship of some sort, someone I am assuming is not interested in sex with me so I am tentative and awkward in my interactions and I almost never feel comfortable because I don’t even know what to say, someone I have to actively reject because they are assertive with their interest and I do not feel we are compatible, and rapists.

This is why I have traditionally slept with most of my friends. Now we are in a whole new life phase and I can’t do what worked in the past. I need to learn how to have a different set of categories because the primary way to be in a positive relationship with me historically is no longer available and that is going to be difficult. I know that Scottish men have a whole lot of major differences with the American men I have historically had big conflicts with but that’s ok we will just find slightly refined versions anyway. It’ll be close enough that a hand wave will explain the differences.

Sometimes there are platonic friendships with heavy flirting and there is a “dang can’t because x” exchange every so often and that much engagement lets me feel like I am in the “Ok I am not being problematic in this relationship.”

Uncle was the only person I ever brought my whole ass difficult personality to at the most extreme points in my development through a highly traumatic childhood who was a man who never sexualised me in any way.

Please do not come at me for how clearly I don’t love this man because I am so intolerant. Love is a complicated emotion. Feeling it does not mean that you agree with or share the same views as another person. Loving someone does not mean you have to act like them or justify their behavior. I mean, I could tell you about uncle’s hurts but frankly that’s not the point.

The point is the pattern. The point is the template. The point is the broad strokes. The point is caricature.

I feel like this might turn into a series because it is not as if uncle is the only man who lives larger than life in my brain. Understanding these people is how I have understood masculinity in my life. I am not saying that any one of them represent that whole of mankind or that they have had life trajectories like every other man. I am saying I knew this man. This is what I knew about him. This is how I saw him. This is what I heard from him. This is what I took away from the culmination of our conversations over multiple decades. I put in the time. I did listen.

I don’t even remember which bullshit thing he told me I had to do “because the Bible” that overlapped with my one brief overture into the 7th Day Adventist Church that happened not long after I was demoted from Princess. I took it hard. I tried to find a rule book that would agree with some of his weird extremist views and this was the option I had to immediate hand.

I really did not come out of that year and a half in the church with the set of beliefs that they all wanted me to have. And that was when I completely lost my shit and I tried to kill myself. Uncle did not come when the family visited me in the hospital. He didn’t even look at me for several months after it happened.

He was my one good man I didn’t have to have sex with. And to him I was now a ghost. Yeah. That was tied in with why we moved down to Bakersfield then my dad propositioned me again and I prosecuted and we ended up back in uncle’s house.

He barely spoke to me for the rest of my life. I mean, let’s be clear there were a few little girls and all boys that he was actively more hostile and nasty towards than he was with me because he was a petty, pathetic, loser. I scared him more. I would argue him down about absolutely every stupid thing he said to me so he just stopped talking.

I did love him. I tried to talk to him about neutral things. I would bring up songs. He would derail into his conspiracy theory. I would refuse to listen to the topic and ask him to talk about something else. It would turn into a racist rant. I would opt out of that one too. It went into a misogynistic screed about how I act like this because the feminists ruined me.

Yeah. It was awkward.

I mean, he was never my primary financial provider. My aunt earned more money the whole time I lived there. That’s how she got to over rule him and say that when someone needed a place to go she would always take them in. Because she was the one paying the mortgage. She bought the food.

So he refinanced the house and the hoard grew.

I am not saying I have a definitive view of masculinity but when I think of toxic masculinity I think of uncle. I think of the rage and frustration that was twisted into really toxic places because he didn’t get what he felt entitled to get in life. He was promised more. Who promised? This was not a conversation that ended well any time I pushed. I suspect I would do better now at getting him to admit out loud that he is sad because it turns out life was a trick and he never got rich. He was Willy Fucking Loman. And I lived in his house. And he always snuck me ice cream and treats even when he wasn’t speaking to me.

That’s the thing about the last few years. Our relationship changed. We were no longer able to have conversations but we did spend time in the same room. There would be these eye contact interactions that felt intensely emotional and bonding. One time around when I got married but before I had kids when I was over at the house for a visit. We had one of these moments where I was sitting on the couch as far away from him as I could get because we both didn’t know what to say. Sitting in that spot means you get blasted at top volume because you are right next to the tv. It means we can’t hear each other very well so we can pretend that is the reason we aren’t speaking. We looked at each other for 10-15 minutes while some stupid show played loudly in my ear. He crooked his finger at me like he has done since I was a very little girl. I came over and sat across the arms of his lazy boy like I have done since I was a teenager and I got heavy enough that he couldn’t really handle the pressure on his legs.

He pulled me in and he leaned his head on my shoulder and he put a hand on my back and he gave me a pat. I had this intense full body sob rock through me. I didn’t keep crying. Then he patted me on the back more intensely and nodded his head a few times. He said, “Yeah. I know.” I’m not sure we said more than hello or goodbye after that.

Moving is super fucking weird. When you move around an area you shift your web of people but you don’t entirely destroy it and rebuild from scratch. Changing countries has been a complete rebuild. Under different constraints and with different rules for the whole experience from start to finish.

Lately I have been noticing how hard it is to actively interact some days because my understanding of people and patterns and behaviour expectations are all based on a life lived under circumstances that would seem pretty alien to folks here in many ways. I don’t know the scripts. Learning is a slow and laborious process and it’s intimidating knowing that I have as many mistakes ahead of me as I have behind me and I have absolutely mere remnents and shadows of my history in my head as I try to figure out how I should be acting now.

Sometimes when someone says a thing or makes a hand movement like uncle with the same physical build it feels like I’m looking at a grainy 1980’s Polaroid. But that’s not what is happening. This is a different person and a different time. This person has completely different experiences and views of the world. Maybe? I don’t know. It always feels so difficult to find out. I don’t get the upside anymore. It’s harder to put in the work.

On I trudge. One more day. One more navel gazing.

  • Number made up out of thin air. I have no fucking idea what the percentage is but it’s a very tricky dynamic and will often create massive problems.

Monogamy != Monoamorous? x-post

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I have spent a rather excessive amount of time over the past 15 years on parenting websites. Every parenting website likes to give relationship advice as well and I find it pretty fascinating learning what other people think relationships require. It’s worth mentioning that for the simple majority of that time I have been sexually monogamous (not all of it, but we are on our longest monogamy stretch at this point). I was told with great fervor that regardless of who I was or wasn’t fucking I wasn’t actually a good wife.

Let me explain.

My lovers and partners are still massively important to me. They are my friends before any of the other shenanigans are considered. I will do quite a bit for these people. I have former lovers I speak with nearly every day. We talk each other through the challenging parts of being regulated in our lives. We talk about parenting practices and experiences with our respective off-spring. I ask them for advice and they ask me for advice in our primary partnerships. I trust these people to have my best interests at heart. They are equally as likely to say, “Ah Krissy, you are fucking up. You can’t do ____.” as “Noah shouldn’t have done that. How are you going to talk to him to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”

If you stop fucking someone but otherwise your relationship changes very little… did you break up? Does that count as monogamy or is it an emotional affair!?!?! Then picture a horror movie scream/gasp and clutching of pearls. (This is where the parenting boards think I am a horrible wife.)

I find it fucking appalling that Straightlandia thinks you need to cut off all contact with former partners in order to prove loyalty to your current partner. That’s not proof of loyalty, that’s weird and fucked up and controlling in a bad way.

I think it is part of weird pussy ownership stuff. There are weird hang ups on the pussy owners side that strike me as being very similar to internalised homophobia/misogyny. Quite a few dick-owners out there really like to believe that they are the only one who is allowed to even think about using a given pussy. Uhh, naw dude. I carry my history with me from now until the end of time. No one owns my pussy but me. I will not cut off the people I have known biblically, regardless of their genitals, just because I am fucking someone else right now.

I’m not doing a full Black Mirror style graphic reliving in my head all of the amazing play and sex I’ve had with other people while I’m with my husband. I think that would be kind of weird. Strangely enough we do far more talking about my rape experiences/my really bad sex experiences during our sex life because pushing those buttons is hot. (are hot? is hot? That sentence just kinda sucks.) When I am falling asleep sometimes I do go through my mental rolodex and think about all of the reasons I love you, and you, and you, and you. Sometimes these memories do involve scenes or sexual encounters but I don’t masturbate thinking about them. I just allow myself to re-feel the oxytocin of that moment. I love you and you love me. Not all love is the “I want to marry you and make babies with you” kind. I have shared connection with many people. I don’t see most of them very often or at all any more. Even so, that connection is still present in my heart and I want you to feel joy and connection and happiness and an overflowing of love in your life.

I am someone who falls in love very easily. People are my religion. I am overawed by how people manage to change the reality they live in and cooperate to change whole societies. I find that awe inspiring and very easy to worship and adore and love. In order to stop me from falling in love with people you would have to perform trepanation or maybe a full frontal lobotomy. I don’t think you would have an easy time drugging it out of me. It’s easy to give me drugs that make me not want to have sex. I have never experienced a drug that stops me from feeling love for people.

Straightlandia tries to place some sort of boundary between “friend” and “person I have had sex with” as if once the boundary is crossed the person cannot be a friend later. That’s kind of silly. Why would I want to say that someone cannot be my friend if they love me in many, myriad, complex ways? It’s supposed to be a simple, basic, uncomplicated love between friends? I don’t think I know how to do that. My feelings are always complex and multi-layered and intense. Even if I had to only talk to people I have not had sex with… you think I wouldn’t develop that emotional relationship with deep complexity again? Only if you put a muzzle on my mouth and duct tape my fingers so I can’t type anymore.

I am going to fall in love no matter what. It doesn’t matter if I am sexually monogamous or not. I am going to have deep, complicated, messy relationships. Just because I haven’t fucked you yet doesn’t mean there is a lack of tension and allure there. Given the right circumstances there aren’t very many people I would be completely unwilling to have sex with. I am not wired to be very picky about who I find sexually attractive.

I am, however, a grown ass woman who understands that I need to be careful about the agreements I have made. Once upon a time in my marriage our agreement was, “We will be monogamous for a while and then we won’t be again.” It turns out that was a poor agreement for us to have. And we had other issues blow up all at the same time. So we did break our sexual monogamy in the marriage. The result of that difficult period is that I don’t ever get to ask to break sexual monogamy again. Every relationship has agreements and some are more strict than others.

My husband is not stupid though. He knows that asking me to control when and who I have sex with is not even on the same planet as asking me to stop being in love with people or to stop carrying on the relationships I have with former partners. He knows that trying to isolate me from the connections I have built would do a lot to wreck my mental health and he does not want that for me. He knows that a lot of the reason I have a full bucket and enough to give to him and our children is because of the love that freely passes back and forth between me and my constellation of friends and former lovers. My relationships are deep and intense and long-lasting.

He loves that about me. He says it helps him feel secure that I am very unlikely to ever stop loving him. I can clearly carry love for a very long time even through a connection that has winnowed down to a tiny spider thread.

I am a fervent and devout follower of my faith. I love all of you, even those I don’t.

I just came to say: goodbye, love.

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The dawn is less bright today. You might think that is because I saw the sun come up over soggy England but, no. This is the first sunrise without Andrew in it.

I first encountered Andrew through Frenzi, a mailing list centred around a group of folks in the bay area who all share a hobby. I met a lot of brilliant, witty, argumentative, wise, and patient people through there. Of course there were a lot of dipshits too.

Andrew was the first person to flame me on the internet. To be fair I had told him that I was surprised that I was never attacked because I felt like I often expressed contrary/unpopular opinions. So he taught me what it felt like to be flamed. Ouch. I learned an important lesson: Andrew was as painfully literal as I am. If you say/imply you want something he will make it happen if he possibly can.

I think I first actually spoke to Andrew and Paula at a birthday party for a friend. I am pretty sure that was my first time ever going to a Thai restaurant and I completely fell in love with the food and the company of the people I was lucky enough to sit next to. Specifically: Paula. She was so kind and gentle. It surprised me that someone as gentle and carefully considered was suited to be married to someone as prickly as Andrew. Later I came to understand how they complemented each other.

When I first moved out of living with Tom things were scary for a while. I was not sure how I was going to pay my bills and still have money for food. Andrew told me that he would absolutely not accept me going without food and if I was that skint I needed to let him know and he would make sure I ate.

With my background of poverty and periodic starving because my mother could not afford food at all he seemed absolutely unbelievable. Why would he care?

I feel like that was one of the overarching story arcs of our relationship. I have never really understood why he cared so much about me. He frequently made offers of support and love and affection and I didn’t know how to accept them. He was also very free with his opinion and he was often insightful and hilarious. One memorable time he found out who I had started dating and he said, “Oh Krissy, dump him. He’s not smart enough for you and you are going to get so bored.” He was right on the money. He loved Noah for me.

Paula helped finish the walls in my garage in Fremont. Andrew helped paint the ceiling. It made me so happy looking at that ceiling for years knowing that Andrew helped. I could feel his (and Paula’s and Taylor’s because T did soooooo much on that project with me) love surrounding me. Co-working has always been my strongest love language.

Andrew introduced me to books and told me about movies I should watch. He was very annoyed he could never get me to juggle.

We had a big falling out around my 30th birthday. We both did things that hurt the other quite badly. One of the things that I am most grateful for in this life was the chance to try once then a second time to repair the damage from that situation.

Andrew forgave me for being selfish and stupid and cruel. That was a gift he did not owe me. I am lucky that I got to have him in my life for decades. I got to have closure on talking through a situation that hurt me deeply and he felt truly contrite and loving and apologetic. He showed me how to repair a deep wound. Not very many people have been able to manifest that complete journey with me in my life. Andrew was *special*.

I am grateful to the marrow of my bones that I went and saw him twice this year. I loved helping him drive the boat and operate the locks on the canal. He told me that I learned how to drive the boat unusually quickly–he felt confident enough to just leave me alone with it after just a couple of hours of supervision. I felt elated through and through. Like me he wasn’t the sort to hand out unwarranted compliments. I had to have a stern chat with him about why I set the boundaries with my neurodiverse children where I do and he took that on and manifestly started following my rules. I felt respected.

I feel like that is the core. That is the core of what Andrew gave me: he saw me and treated me like someone he respected deeply. I met him at a time in my life when I had not experienced very much of that.

No one is perfect. But Andrew was perfectly wonderful and I am so grateful that I got to have him for so long. Here in the end he is even leaving me an extra gift. I may not be able to say goodbye to him, but he asked me to come to the bay and as a result I will get a lot of love and support from other people who have known him and loved him for as long or longer than me.

It is very hard carrying grief alone. Being able to share grief lightens the burden and helps everyone remember that no one fully dies until everyone who knows and loves them is gone. Andrew’s spirit is going to live on for a long, long, long time.

What does it mean to belong?

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I reach for your hand, your voice, your heart, your screen name.
I want to know who you are, I want to see if we are the same.
In you I see the echo of the love, the pain, the joy I feel.
With you I manage to feel like I might be real.

I wish I didn't need you.
I wish I didn't still want to see you.
I wish I could be with you.

No matter what happens you will always be mine.
We will be connected until the end of our time.

I have touched your soul and you have touched mine and that is all it takes to belong.

Ghosts and Gaelic

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I have started studying Scots Gaelic on Duolingo. So far I can pick out grammar a little bit and I can recognize words in writing. I’m pretty sure my pronunciation is shit and any person who actually speaks it would be annoyed at hearing my butchery. But I’m trying.

It’s a little odd unpacking our stuff. I have a really strong sense of “stuff” being tied to people. When I touch an item I am flooded with memories of the people I have seen use something, how I got it, why it is connected to someone I have loved. We pretty much only mailed stuff that had sentimental attachment. That’s… complicated.

I have a lot of the books that Sarah loved during childhood. She didn’t come and get them after the breakup and I couldn’t handle getting rid of them in a way that felt disrespectful. So I shipped them across an ocean. You know how I had tons of Wonderland stuff? Sarah was the one who was into Alice. All of the tea stuff I shipped… reminds me of her. There is a bunch of art stuff she made with the kids. And still we use backpacks and bags from her. My jewelry box was hers.

Taylor made my absolute favorite blanket.

My mother and Jenny’s mother made the baby blankets we shipped.

I have a photograph that Michael Blue took and I can’t get rid of it and I can’t display it.

I have hair stuff from Kira. I remember her voice reading a lot of the board books we own.

I have baby dresses and a mink stole from my mother/great grandmother.

I have a toddler tank top from Mikey and Katie’s wedding.

I have a vase from Francesca.

I have books from Lee.

I have a Ganesha from Mollena.

I have pictures of people who have been important to me. Thousands of pictures. Ethan and Kevin and Joey and Talia and Michelle and Ian-before-he was Ian. I have pictures of my friends with my children. I have pictures of my friends laughing and having fun. I have pictures of hobbies and activities I will never do again. Many of my friends were lovely and they gave me pictures of them from their childhoods.

The snow globe I was given as a thank you for marrying Michael and Erin.

Presents from Noah’s family. The wedding present his college ex-girlfriend made and gave to us. All of the dishes that were hand made by his aunt (a nice lady; we always make sure we stop in to see her when we come to Texas).

Love does not die with the dissolution of a relationship. Connections do not end even when you attempt to sever them. I am made up of fragments of a thousand different people.

The necklace from Stephan when he thought I was to be his wife.

The bracelets and ring from Tom when he wanted me to feel like his possession.

The things that my children and Noah have given me.

I don’t feel like a person made individual. I feel like an amalgam. I feel like the final result of a group project. I feel like I am so much more than just one thing.

The lip balm handmade by Jami. I’m not quite done with it all yet.

The warm things that Jenny made and gave to my family to help us adjust to the climate. (It’s been a warm winter so far! We’ve barely worn it!)

Items purchased at Saturday market with Ali. Or the other Saturday market that I first showed to Lee.

So so so much purchased with my children. I remember their consultation, “Yes that’s the right one for us.”

Despite the rancor and sadness and bitterness that have been part of some of these partings, I choose to take with me the love. I have been so loved. Bailey told me that people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. Even when the season or the reason has passed for many of these relationships that doesn’t stop the love or the lessons I can choose to learn from them. I can be more because of all these little fragments of love.

The hole in my back is feeling a lot better. It is on the road to healing. The depression and anxiety I have felt all of my life is healing. It’s not that I will always be happy or always feel good–that’s not realistic. It’s time to settle in and start building things and making things in this place. It’s time to make manifest what is in my soul.

I am beautiful. Is it bad that I know this because of the reflections I see in all of these tiny little mirrors? You love me. You love me. You love me. You love me. You love me. You love me. I am a Velveteen rabbit. I am real, I am beautiful, I am whole because you loved me.