What if I am amazing?

I'm down 7 pounds since 10/17. That's pretty good. It is amazing how even a little momentum can make a difference. And Josh.

I had my first full session with LCJ (Life Coach Josh). He does a great job - he listens, redirects, asks probing questions, and helps me create action. Today we did a "Discovery" session where we got to know each other. His first question out the gate was: "Is there anything that happened with this week that will keep you from being present to our session today?" I loved that. Simple but centering. I gave a few little things and then I was really ready for the conversation.

I've had a good week in terms of self-discovery. I will blog about my Monday night group in a hot minute, but not tonight.

I love that Josh is concrete and action-oriented and tender and kind. It is contagious. One of the things I am going to do for myself is to stop describing myself as "not a good person" or "Dick Cheney" or whatever undersell of my ability to be nurturing and kind I am slogging on a particular day.

To be sure, I can be a total prick. But I think I am ultimately a kind man. I care about people. I get furious when I feel people are being compromised or ridiculed or negated or marginalized. I get tired and cranky and melodramatic. But I'm a better guy than I often five myself credit for....

When I hung up from my call with LCJ, I spontaneously said - "what if I am amazing????" There was not thought in it, it was not conscious or premeditated - just an interjection.

But, what if I am amazing.

Fat and Lazy

Today was a fairly lazy day. I woke up with a headache and slept it off until about 11 (that is a super rarity). I weighed in and was up a pound. Not exactly sure how that happened. It has been distressing me all day. I have been eating very well...not exactly ascetic but healthfully and restrained. It sucks that there is not a result on the scale. I need to stay focused because what I want to do is respond with a pizza and a bag of mini powdered donuts.

WTF?

What's great is that now I have a friend, a life coach AND a therapist to co-disappoint. Yay me.

On Josh and Stacy - Heavy Shit

I hit a super-size-me combo yesterday: Josh and Stacy.

I've talked about them before, these two shaman, but just a review - Stacy is my therapist and Josh is my brand-spanking-new life coach. I am working on the same issue "heavy shit" issue with each of them: my weight. God how I hate being fat.

I have put on 35 of the 60 pounds I lost. Again. I can feel totally accomplished and competent but my weight can still make me blush - hot faced and humiliated - when someone says something about it. I usually try and give it a preemptive strike with some self-deprecating remark about my gut or being the size of a Buick or some other such self-perpetrated violence.

Stop. Stop it. Stop.

So this is a quest for the next 90 days and here is how I am going to do it:

First, I am enlisting all of the supports I can - the two balcony people Josh and Stacy, the support of a group, the structure of Weight Watchers, and a toe-dip into mindfulness.

Second, I am putting myself in charge of my eating. I love food. I am fortunate to love food that is good for me. I like it all - lentils and kale and sprouts and tofu and every other mindful thing. So make that shit.

Third, by November 1, 2013 I will add some form of exercise. 10 minutes a day - that's it. Just 10.

Finally, I will write about it. Every. Single. Day. I will write about it here. Some days I may only have a sentence or two, some days I may blog vomit until I can't even stand it myself.

Two important things came from Batman (Stacy) and Robin (Josh):

After complaining to Stacy that everything is "demanding" she said, "No, it's not." Basically the reframe is that things are demanding because I believe them to be. Again, stop it. She also said that nothing is on my plate - both literally and figuratively - that I cannot handle. Okay okay.

Josh was right on top of it. He was so affirming and gentle. He helped me talk through the action and the goal of leanness. He helped me visualize the product - a specific suit on a specific day. Clearly, I cannot manifest this vision if I am drawing negative fatness energy to me. So, stop it.

I believe I have the skills, knowledge and will to do this. I will allow myself time to accomplish this goal and know that on December 16, 2013 I will be presenting a major project to the state in a stunning chocolate suit that is already hanging in my closet.

Thanks, dynamic duo (who by the way are not even ambiguously gay!).

Well Hello Joshua

I came across this web site/blog + forum tonight. I love it. It has made me feel slightly less jaded and a tad more hopeful. It is by a young man named Josh Hersh who is tender and beautiful and a little awkward and intoxicatingly sweet.

I imagine that he smells of sandalwood and of blondness and of artlessness. I read every single entry in his blog roll. They are simple and poignant - self-challenging and unaffected. They are what I want to be thinking, their freshness and belief what I want to remember thinking. I don't know that I was ever as honeyed. Shit, who am I kidding...I was never anything close.

While he is these things, he does not seem unsophisticated. The opposite in fact - his transparency and desire are highly evolved and his spirituality quite mature. In one of his posts he describes wanting to be numinous - filled with the presence of divinity.

I think he is that. Now, I think we all know my general abdication of things God. I can't take the bullshit and the spinning constructions and soul murdering oppressions. But I can definitely believe in the Joshes of the world. I believe in their rare belief. When I encounter such a mythical beast, I want to acquiesce into their searching, their fragile truth.

It is this collapse into tenderness that I need desperately right now. I am so exhausted and grief-stricken and deeply, deeply angry. It is an interior landscape that I can barely even sublimate - it is oozing out in me physically. My head aches - every day for more than two weeks now - my jaw is throbbing from grinding and grinding at night. The food I am eating is absolute shit, it's killing me. I need a Josh to transfuse me, ravishing him like a vampire for succor.

I will return to The Thoughtful Gay Man and to Josh's tender and elegant sophistication and admonition. Thank you sweet boy, strong man for a few moments rest.

Do Your Own Shit. Please.

Some days I am dumbfounded by the general lack of responsibility people will take for themselves. I can't even fucking fathom it.

Let's talk about today. R is not an extremely capable person. He's not stupid but he is lazy and I've rarely encountered someone who is as disinterested in taking personal responsibility for his own care and well-being. It's always someone else's fault: he didn't know, no one sent him a bill, no one told him, I don't understand, I don't....you didn't....they should have.

Where does that come from? I think for him it is a complex survival strategy: If I am in relationships with people who are responsible to the point of being overbearing, then I can put the thing on cruise control and not have to think about things. I don't need to worry about who is going to pay the mortgage or when the light bill is due. I don't have to put things in a calendar or think about a budget or wonder if there will be food in the fridge.

What would that feel like? What would it be like to relieved of those kinds of responsibilities. Sure, in all relationships there is a division of labor. Some people take care of this, others take care of that. But goddamit, I take care of every fucking thing. I would love to have a 30 day period when all I had to do was go to work and come home. No bills, no nothing.

Or like we do with people in social services. Let's sit down and figure out a way to make you a more successful person. We're going to give you help with your rent, your food, your medical, your treatment, your reintegration into society. And oh yeah, we're going to do this for you because you are a total fuck up: a drugged up, criminal, negligent, scofflaw.

When was the last time someone said to me - hey Doc, what can we do to help you? How can we lighten your load, make things easier for you financially, reduce your stress and make things better for you? What can we do for you so that your happiness is increased? Your well being enhanced? You deserve some kindly assistance and support because you have always been a contributing member of society! How about if we create a program and fund it through the hard work of others to assist you?

I am getting so bitter. I am getting so sick and tired of being the one left holding the bag. I have no one - no family, no friends, NO ONE who can help me. It's bullshit. I want to go on strike. I want to stop helping people. I want to make it ABOUT ME.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

I think about my parents dying. A lot. I think about it not like a lot of people who worry about the loss of support and love and companionship and someone to call for advice. Nope, I think about it as uncertain - how will I handle it? How will I feel? R asked me one evening "how will you feel when your parents die"? It's a tough question to really know the answer to....

But I said: "Relieved".

I don't hate my parents. I have hated them at different points, but not now. I love them but they had to go. It is wrong, it is senseless, it is insane. It has been much more difficult than I anticipated. It is difficult not because my day-to-day life is changed because it hasn't -  I never really depended heavily on them or called them for a lot of support. It's difficult because family is gone. The sense that ultimately there is family available and that there is some cohesion and sense of continuity. That must be what it's like when your parents die.

My parental divorce has been a blow to my equilibrium - affecting me deeply. I think it is the needlessness of it, the disregard for me as a real person, their choice to live by their sword and then be foisted on it. I'm sure that as time goes on, there will be sweet relief. But for now it's just shit.

Here is my letter, the correspondence that filed for divorce. Like a divorce, the decree is not finality. It is only the beginning of another gruesome chapter in a relationship.

BILL OF DIVORCE

Dear Mother and Dad,

I think it’s probably past time for me to share a little bit about where I’m at and what conclusions I have been coming to. More than 5 years ago, you and Dad set some very specific boundaries around what you would tolerate at family gatherings and things that were off limits to discuss or mention. I have been very respectful of those boundaries and respectful of both of you as a son. I have offered help and assistance to our family and spent much of my adult life trying to make the family cohesive with holidays, memories, and sometimes stay afloat financially. I’m not looking for any accolades for that, I enjoyed doing it.

I have a different family now. R and C are the focus of my family attention and love. It has been very frustrating and hurtful not to have even this reality acknowledged and to attend family gatherings as if he did not exist. I have done so out of the respect for the rules that you established. I have shaken my head countless times at the many violent, objectionable men [my sister] was permitted to bring to any function, any time and they were at least politely addressed and ate at our table. Yet, I have a great relationship with someone who is loving and decent who must remain completely unspoken and unacknowledged.

Over the past 15 months, R has had a stroke, a severely broken leg and ankle requiring two surgeries, a cardiac arrest from arrhythmia, and a heart cath with angioplasty and a stent. This has been extremely stressful on its own but combined with school and work has been a huge challenge.  When Rr had his stroke we were stuck in Tiffin, C was with us- it was a very hot day. I needed someone to come and support me and take C and just be available. You and Dad were the last people on earth I could call.

We are so fortunate to have friends who serve as family. We have people who we can call any time for anything and they will support us and we certainly return that support. I have a life full of people who respect me both personally and professionally and consider me a kind, generous, smart person who is willing to help people in need. That is such a blessing.

Unfortunately, I am convinced that your opinion of me is very different. …I know that I am perceived as selfish, aloof and uncaring and that is just not accurate. That perception absolutely dumbfounds the people who know me and get support from me every day. I have tried to keep in touch with you, albeit not on a regular schedule. I can easily say that I have reached out to you and Dad far more than you have to me. In January, my New Year’s resolution was to have at least one positive contact with you each month. Now, it’s just too much.

I really don’t have a connection with you that is viable. That used to infuriate me, depress me, and frustrate me. Now, it just makes me a little sad. There’s really no reason for me to attend family functions, I absolutely do not need or want anything from you. I’m no longer hurt or angry, I’m just done.

I want you to fully remember that these are your rules and your boundaries. I was told explicitly that no one I was with would ever be welcome at family functions and that you did not want to know anything about it. I did my best to straddle both worlds but I am not going to do that anymore. You have chosen compliance with rules over relationship and I will respect that but not participate.

I love you both but there is no reason for me to continue to invest in trying to make a relationship with you.

D.S.

This will be the first of several posts about my Grandmother who died 1/2/2010.

My Grandmother died on January 2nd. She was 83 years old. It was her 66th wedding anniversary. She was incredible.

And by incredible, I mostly mean extraordinary and hard to believe.

She was born in 1926 to a very poor family in Nicholasville, KY. My great-grandfather decided he was called to be a preacher and went back to school, beginning in the eighth grade, in his 30s. He moved his family - my great-grandmother Jesse who was half Cherokee, and his three children, to Wilmore, KY to attend Asbury College. It was the beginning of the Great Depression and there was practically no money, a reality that was to inform my Grandmother's world view until the day she died.

As the middle child of three, a brother and sister on either side, I think my Grandmother always felt like she was overlooked. She had an amazing devotion to her father who went on to be a preacher and found a large church. By all reports, my great-grandparents were not demonstrative people - my great-grandfather was puritanical and my great-grandmother was deeply reserved. As a result, my Grandmother was determined that her family and those around her knew they were loved and adored.

Of all of the things I loved about my Grandmother, I loved her stories most. I have a strong affinity with anything related to the 1930s and 40s because of the vivid descriptions of her childhood. She was determined that I would know the names of the people who were part of her history, and how the branches of my family tree were connected. She wanted me to know her story and the lessons she had learned.

Coming of age during the Great Depression and as a teen during World War II, she was profoundly affected by the events of her time. She often recounted a story of being in the first grade and needing to go to the dentist. Preventive dentistry was unheard of in those days, and she needed to have teeth pulled. The dentist informed her father that numbing the affected teeth would be $5. Even as a little girl, she could see the crestfallen look on his face, $5 being a week's wages. So she passed.

Not on the tooth-pulling, but on the anaesthetic. She had her teeth pulled without it in order to spare her father the staggering bill. He was so grateful, he took her to the candy store and bought 25 cents worth of candy, something that she never had before or after. Counterintuitive by today's dental standards, but the teeth were gone afterall.

In those days, marrying early was de rigueur. There is a picture of her standing next to her best friend around 1940. Both 14, the are dressed in Sunday best with orchid corsages and complicated hats. It was a day they were both going to sneak out and get married. Some Kentucky hilljack boys had proposed and they were practically spinsters. They were going across the county line to wed

Helping of Haggis

The state is simply offal: Jesus stole my hag.

I've had this happen before and I have no idea why I didn't think it would or at least could happen again. It seems that the Lord Jesus Christ, given that he has little else to do, found it necessary to disembowel my support system, removing the heart of it to boil in a casing of my own skin.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. It certainly doesn't feel melodramatic - it just feels empty and jumpy. Happy day. It wasn't enough that I've had to deal with this bullshit since birth, it has to recur and recur. I'm totally down with people finding their own way... but Jesus Christ.

So, I'm left again to try and bind something together out of scraps. To scrape enough of what's left and try to form it into a family, a structure, a feeling that there is something to just keep me from free falling. Maybe it isn't really even necessary - this thing we convince ourselves that we need. There a about a gazillion people who function completely on their own. Here is the best I can offer myself: depend on no one. No one is going to help you emotionally, no one is going to support you financially, no one is going to chop down any brush to clear your path even a little bit. You are on your own.

The good thing, however, is that I'm pretty good at doing all of that stuff for myself. I don't always like it, but I am responsible for my own being and for C-Dog. That's it. R is really on his own in the end, so are the friends that I've tried to fashion into a family, so is everyone. They can create their own shit and I will create mine.

It would be so comforting though, to know that there are people you can call in the middle of the night, people who will co-create traditions with you, someone who could loan you $100 bucks. But there isn't, there hasn't been, and there will not be.

So Jesus, take this hag and the hags before her and the parents and the siblings and the rest. They are yours. It's a "gotcha" for me - but know that I would fuck you in the hand hole if I got the chance.

And so, bye to the hag, bye to the silliness of once again thinking there was something solidly architectural about my surroundings. If I can make something creative and decent out of the innards and scrapings that are left, I will.

And so it goes.

I was driving home from out of town yesterday and stopped at a thrift shop. I found this Betty Buckley CD and heard her version of "Come on, Come on" for the first time. It was just honey sweet and sad. It's a Mary Chapin Carpenter tune that  Betty interprets so longingly. As I listened to it, I saw that the leaves are changing already. I don't know if it's early or if I've just lost track of time. It made me think of my first bear and of this blog and of this post from several years ago. Listen and read.

MY FIRST BEAR

I love the autumn. Everything about it – the coolness, the color, the coming of winter. I love the way that the chill moves you indoors and redirects you toward the home and safety and warmth. I love the memories of autumn, of Halloweens and Thanksgivings, of midterms long since taken, of turkey comas and the first Christmas carol on the radio.

And I love the memory of Rolland.

It’s been a quarter century since we last saw each other. He was my first bear, and definitely one of the great loves of my youth. I don’t even really remember the first time we met. But I remember his presence that I still sense almost 25 years later. I didn’t know when we met that he was going to be the first major loss of my life, but when he let himself slip off a bridge into the flooded Kankakee River, he took my belief in youth and infinity with him.

Rolland was immensely talented. He was a musician and true Renaissance man. Reared in the Nazirene Church, he earned his musical chops at the organ of low church and eventually went to Olivet. He hated Nazirenes. In their typical myopia, they completely missed his beauty. They completely missed who he was. He found a home in the Episcopal Church, but never really got over the wounds of his Nazirene history.

I was immediately entranced by him. He was, after all, my first bear. Bearded and shaggy, he had soft chocolate eyes and a wonderful belly. While the seeds of my bear fetish certainly predated him, he was the one who brought it to life.

And he was amazing.

He lived in a place I considered magic. It was remote and far away from campus – a place I desperately wanted to escape. His home was quirky and artistic and full of unique things like finches named Winken, Blinken, and Nod. He raised beautiful Arabian horses and loved to ride in the woods behind his old stone house. It was just the type of hiding place I needed. Everything was delicious and interesting. And I loved him and wanted him.

Our relationship didn’t really last long, just that autumn. But I can remember so many details. It was my first real move out and away from what I knew to who I am. I remember doing very ordinary things with him – cleaning horse stalls and canning tomatoes. We sat on his bed and drank scotch and I pretended to be sophisticated. I didn’t know it, but I was handsome then – I look at the pictures now and wish I had seen it. But with Rolland all I wanted to do was be beautiful and grown up and have it last forever.

And then he died. I was at my grandparent’s house when a friend called and told me that he had committed suicide. November 18, 1985. I remember not even being able to react because I couldn’t explain to my family who this man was and even more importantly who he was to me. It would have been too risky, a blackjack player’s tell that tips off the dealer that he’s way over 21 and should have held on the last card. It was Thanksgiving break so I didn’t go to his funeral. That was it. No closure, no grief space, just move on.

I interpreted his death as the ultimate morality tale. It confirmed what every Nazirene knows at his core: faggoty sin such as Rolland’s is tragically fatal. The wages of sin is death. I didn’t know then that after taxes it’s more of just a tired feeling. I took a good long look at the broad road I was on and recoiled in terror.

It took me decades to not be afraid.

I see now that his death wasn’t the result of any Nazirene voodoo but he was sensitive and depressed and damaged by the people and superstitions that damaged us all. I also see that I was sensitive and depressed and damaged and let the theological inventions of a sub sect of a sub sect paralyze me into anesthetizing a part of myself, cryogenically freezing my identity until I was able to find a cure and thaw out.

I believe that there will be a giant reckoning. On one side of the balance will be the good works of the Nazirenes: feeding some hungry and clothing some naked. On the other will be an enormous heap, osmium dense and amorphous, representing all of the shards of God’s image that have been destroyed by their tiny theology. These are shards of creativity and humor and fun and beauty and humanness, real people not just “souls” to be saved.

It is years later, Rolland, and I still think of you. My first, beautiful bear.