gathering up the splinters of my past to survive my future
Last week, on Christmas Eve, the cycle of my cancer story renewed. This will be the seventeenth play-through. Last month, the death of a brilliant and talented woman that I barely knew generated a round of survivor’s guilt unlike I’ve experienced in some time. I started this post, intending to make it about losing the …
Continue reading “no splinter, just me: on the lump’s anniversary”
I used to sing, and boy-oh-boy it lifted my heart to do so, but I wasn’t really any good. Not really. I was at best convenient. I didn’t get any solos. Ever. Except two solo and ensemble contests, but Luther picked those solos for who he wanted me to be, not who I was. Who …
I am not okay today. I have no idea why, really, but it’s been following me all weekend. Does anyone remember Avatar Depression Syndrome? All these people felt lost in our world because they longed for a better place, a better environment. And my only response was “Only just now?” We watched the series finale …
Three years ago, I posted the following to social media: My sophomore year of college, in Cincinnati, I went to a party down the street from my apartment. I don’t remember who invited me or how I knew about it, but I remember the young man. He was the first man to ever flirt with …
Continue reading “my loss of self, on national coming out day”
I write this blog with a specific goal, but without a clear path to get there; like those things I fully understand as long as I never look them square on… Lifetimes ago, I discovered a blog post that introduced me to the Hindu goddess Akhilandeshvari, she who is never not broken. A piece of …
For the most part, I have used this blog to pine about versions of myself shedded off as I navigate my path through the world. This morning, I’m using it to long for a missing me that hasn’t yet left: my man of leisure, my retired homebody. You see, this pandemic has brought a huge …
My Old Skin Horse is not a quantum divergence like other selves I have mentioned in these posts. He is quite entangled with the bits of me holding to this core reality. For any that don’t know the reference, the Skin Horse is the oldest and wisest toy from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. …
Today, I am focused on one particular quantum split. When I was a kid, my dad maintained the family vechiles himself: mechanical issues, body work, paint touch-up. He welded, airbrushed, bondo-ed and sanded everything we had that needed it. More than a few times, I was invited to help him in the garage. Until the …
Sometimes in my life, I don’t realize how much I’ve missed something until that thing has returned into my life. This can include my own behaviors or activities, social events, people, places… I’ve recently discovered exactly how much I’ve been missing the out-and-proud gay man that I had always been. I started coming out, at …
My nineteen year old self was suicidal in thought. He didn’t engage directly in obvious self-harm, but he dreamt a lot about driving off bridges in that beast of a car, his hand-me-down 1978 Mercury Cougar… That fact didn’t interfere too much with his life, surprisingly, which was mostly just college course work and the …
