Decrying Gravity

Today in one of my classes, our professor asked us to highlight our "lows and highs" from the past week. Other people listed difficulties finding time for partners, being homesick, difficulty acquiring partners for their lows. I said I do not feel like the person I want to be, and I am struggling to figure out why this is true and how I can change.

I'm twenty five today. And I can read last year's entry and think "I was so much closer then." I have gotten into the field I wanted at the level I wanted it. I transitioned genders. I acquired all kinds of new experiences, some quite good others fundamentally challenging essential parts of my self. And yet I feel further now that where I was.

I feel angry, distant. I feel *alien*. I feel so far away from everyone. At least in the past, I could listen to them, care about them, give them something of myself. But now, I feel as I have given all of myself away. And I have next to nothing left. My empathy is exhausted, my patience is shattered, my hope is modest at best. I used to be able to talk to people and find their pain, find their goodness and love them. Now I am just hard.

The hardness, alone, is stultifying. But there is always the fear that "This Is How It Always Shall Be." That fear that I will never find another S. That she was an opportunity that I failed both for myself and herself. That everything else will be "What Could Have Been" and "What Will Not Be."

But even as I write this, I feel resistance. I know that people change (I perhaps moreso than many). I know that I have much to feel positive about, much more than I've had before (aside from S). I can feel a voice inside me fighting, relentlessly, and it is a welcome change to find that it is not only the negative voice which dominates the conversation of my self any more. I am hurt. I will always be hurt. But, with enough work and time, I hope (if not believe) that I can get perpetually closer to who I need to be. Perfecting, not perfection.

Perhaps I have gone backwards. Or perhaps it's just one more detour that will make the rest of the journey all the richer. Let me know how that works out, future self.

I am angry. I am so angry. At nothing at everything. I really think I was better, once. I know I was better. I empathized more, cared more. I held others in positive regard. But now? Now I'm just bitter. I look around me and find a sea of incomprehension. And the one person who "got it," who got *me* cut me out of her life for reasons as nebulous as they are unassailable. It is not so much that I lost a love, oh no. It is that I lost a kindred spirit.

Yes, I have someone else who does a great job with what she has. But we have gulfs that cannot be crossed. And I just feel so alone. So alienated from everyone. I want to immerse myself in someone else's suffering so I don't feel so very alone, because I feel so hurt and I just don't feel it from those around me. I need this poison to be siphoned from my psyche, and all I see are blank faces, each another grain of salt. It hurts too much. It hurts too much. I didn't realize how much it hurt, but the more I realize that no, everyone is not suicidal, no, everyone is not terribly depressed, no, the feelings I feel are *different,* the more terrified I am that I am alone and that finding another like me is so far away. So very far away.

Known triggering mechanisms immediately:
1. 5 hours of fretful, stressed sleep (as opposed to my normal 8)
2. New people/social situation
3. Talking about suicide all day with few breaks, thinking of S killing herself unavoidably S killing herself losing losing losing
4. Realizing that everyone else in the training only knows of suicidality incidentally, tangentially. They've not tried, they've not experienced. Where is their suffering? Where is their pain? Why do I feel like the only one in the room feeling?
5. A bit over three weeks since breakup

God. It shouldn't hurt this much. I know it shouldn't.

There's a book I'm reading now which switches POV between characters each chapter. And one of the POVs is that of someone who's been tortured. Not just tortured for a few days, but tortured over many months if not longer, who has had every impulse and sense of identity retrained to be "less than human." He is terrified of everyone who would help him, mistrusting always, compelled to do absolutely anything requested of him because he knows, knows so agonizingly well, what horrors could truly happen to him. He knows pain. Pain which, by its nature, those who have no experienced it can barely even grasp intellectually, much less emotionally. And the worst part of all is that it all just feels so S.

She told me, that last night, that "pain is greater than all." And I didn't dare protest. Because as much as I, as we who have not been so hurt may want to believe we would be different, when hurt enough we will break. And once broken, all we can do is strive to make our miserable existences slightly less so.

She wrote, in her last email, "I have kept asking you to wait while I have yielded to weakness, weakness, weakness." And it broke my heart not just to know that she felt that way, but moreso to learn that I would not get the chance to try to convince her otherwise. That I had waited months, with silence, with doubt, with omnipresent fear, with unquenched need, with utter longing, with broken love, with fickle self-hatred, with with with to finally be able to wrap her in my arms and hold her and let her feel some ounce of safety, some bit of reprieve that surely she deserved that I knew I could give her if only given half the chance, that I had waited so long and come so close only to have, with a few words, us both be dashed.

I am angry, often. Angry at the intangibles, certainly. But angry with her. If I was convinced she was better off without me, I could heal my new hurt with some solace. But instead it all just seems so pointless. I am angry. Because I wanted to love her so very much. Because I knew I was uniquely positioned to do so. And because it all became too much *so close* to realization.

But pain is a marvelous teacher, and I have learned not to want answers. I have learned that sometimes people are hurt and stay hurt for no reason. Nothing preventable, nothing avoidable, it just... happens. And although we perhaps have control over our responses, since we can never be right where another is, judgment is the province of the self alone. Was she right or wrong? That's really for her to decide. And, knowing her, I can pretty well imagine her decision.

It still hurts, of course. I read these chapters in this book and I'm just profoundly struck by a desire to love. Not to save or protect, for I am illfitted for either role (if even any person could fill them). But I so dearly want to love that hurt. To let my faith in the goodness of the wretched permeate through the cracks that are in their armor (despite their beliefs to the contrary), to love and let them finally need and to have that need be answered. I want to love that character. I want to love all who have been hurt so very badly. I want to love S.

And I need to remember that. Because I feel so rough and raw that it is difficult to focus externally. I am almost appalled when I speak to others who don't know what it's like to live in constant fear, with no safety and no saviors, with "need" being so clearly a luxury they cannot afford. And I *know* the other side of this coin, that *I* don't know pain, that *I* am so so fortunate, that *I* am not one to raise my suffering upon any podium and say "the line of legitimacy starts here."

But it's so difficult to do. Because I, in truth, feel as if I love no one. I feel that I cannot need anyone and have them be who I need them to be. I feel so alienated. And even as I like being around people, it is only Sisyphus being excited about reaching the top of the hill, only for inevitability to follow.

I want to need someone. I want someone to love me. Love *me* and *know* precisely the wretchedness they're loving. And I feel that with that foundation, like a spring of cold clear water beneath my craggy surface, I would be overflowing with what I could offer others. And I so do want to love.

Essentially, what this comes down to is "I need to be loved to love." And sans some Galatea, the common sentiment is that I must turn towards Narcissus instead. "Love one's self to love others."

I wonder, after I'm able to woo my heart and win my trust, how long it will take before I too break up with me? Empiricism indeed.

It has been a long year. It wasn't quite one year, although it was close enough, that I showed her some essential part of me and she responded. When I saw fear and hope mixed in tears she'd not let flow for a lifetime. When I crumbled next to her, so close she almost touched but did not and promptly left like all do. It has been a year and a week since I first wrote her [wrote you]. And, if I'm being honest, she's all I've been writing to since.

There is little point in declaring a single moment an anniversary or, perhaps, a beginning. There are so many single points. But it's the constellation that really matters. My constellation, of the past year, has been a cocoon. Woven of three threads, I've been growing. And in a month's time [or so] I'll inch out and my life will begin anew.

Of the three threads, two have grown firm: I've more or less “completed” the more salient parts of my transition to female, and I've been accepted into graduate school for the career I've always been best suited for. The third will be more or less resolved within the next month, and while it is in no way assured and I am not optimistic, I nevertheless feel hopeful. And if it, too, grows strong, I feel I will have transformed on a fundamental level into someone alive. The butterfly spreads her wings..

I have learned, too. Lessons I already knew, lessons I will never know and will relearn and learn again.

Love heals but does not cure.

Forever and tomorrow are not real; they are intangible. All we know and feel is now. Waiting is a form of death, and I have been dead too long.

Trauma happens. Some sans cause, some sans solution. We can grow. The wounds will never close. But we can grow out, over, around, and through them.

All will end, if we do not first. Love, joys, sufferings, nows. All will end. They exist, no doubt, as we do. But they will end. And, knowing this, we must not waste them.

Words are clumsy, stumbling over what is in the dark. They may say what we want, but their meanings are not our own when we give them away. Often, they are still worth giving. But sometimes, when what they become is so disparate, we give more than we get back. And we pay the difference.

It all strikes as cliché, and it is. Axioms that are not true insomuch as they feel like the time and place of my now. I may look back upon this, in another quarter century, and know [or glimpse] a self I am no longer.

The resonance:

“Everything dies, baby, that's a fact.”

“They know my name because I told it to them/
But they don't know where and they don't know when.”

“'Farewell' is the song that Time sings.”

“I love you so much I want to die.”

“And I'm trying.
I'm trying.”

You crying.

You not letting go.

“Can I see you?”

The way you held onto me the first moment, like breath to the drowned.

“I want to tear you apart and put you back together with me inside of you.”

“That's hi-larious.”

The cold wind and looking at you in front of me so far away.

Your eyes, moment by moment, swallowing me whole.

The ripples of your back running through me.

Stop signs in January blizzards.

“You're not even saying anything very funny, but I'm still laughing.”

“i cant love anymore, it's not right
please say something to me”

silence

help, please, and silence

I decided to live, at some point. There was a definitive choice that I remember, after I frantically scrambled through the clinic searching for a way to overdose on pills locked too far from my reach. But bridges and balloons beckoned, still, and I decided to live. And I think I will be alive. If I survive long enough to find a “you” who stays, to complete the last thread.

But even if they stay, they'll leave too. Or I'll leave them. It ends, it all ends. And they'll cry for help and no matter the ink used or the ways your lips move, we'll get silence in return. It all ends.

And I will still fail and disappoint and hate and hurt. And if “life” is feeling, then life is sorrow as much as it's joy.

But almost a year ago today, I cried for hours, aching for what I'd lost. It hurt because I'd loved it, because I cared for it, because it was gone. And I may never find it again. And even if I find it, I will never keep it. And even after I've found it, I will still lose and hurt and fail and feel.

The hurt is the price I pay for being alive. And in your arms and eyes, though arms let go and eyes close, it's still a cost worth paying.

I don't know why I don't want to go back on antidepressants. My therapist has made some pretty convincing arguments for them. And even if she's not 100% accurate, they're still steps towards possible improvement of some sort.

She took down the DSM IV last week and showed me the entry for depression. I'd read it before, of course, but looking at it this time I counted 7/9 criteria that fit me. It's literally textbook. Everything feels heavy, I'm worried and stressed all the time, my concentration/focus is suffering (I've written dozens of half-written blog entires because I can't finish any of them), nothing gives me pleasure, I'm varying degrees of suicidal, and I have been for months, if not since Governor's School last year. I am depressed, and it's clear it's beyond my control. So why don't I want medication?

Two weeks ago, I decided to stop taunting myself and take some definitive steps towards suicide. I mean, what's the point in always thinking about it and never doing it? And it was Fate laughing when I walked into Party City and the very first thing in front of the door was a stack of helium cannisters just like the ones I'd researched online. I bought one. Just $38 [the ones online were $50].

It's interesting, because Exit International argues that their tools will decrease suicides since they give individuals a feeling of control. And it's honestly worked. I've rarely thought of suicide since. I'm not as tormented or afraid. I'm just... heavy.

The heaviness is strange, too. It's not so much all movement; I spend most of my day pacing and thinking, after all. But when I'm lying down, it's like my limbs and body weigh so much more. It takes so much more to lift, an act of violence to get up, a dizzying array of half-woken retreats into exhaustion to gradually rise out of bed on days when I don't have another reason to get up. It's all just so heavy.

I could go on with symptoms. And, truly, it's not an easy period. I go over and over and over the scenarios that might play out with S when/if she comes back later this summer. The roulette poem does a surprisingly good job of illustrating the more realistic ones. But even then, I think it'll be better than this constant subliminal terror.

Because, truly, I've been gutted these past seven months. I've lost much of my empathy, my patience, my compassion. I don't care as much, don't feel as much, am so wrapped up inside myself consumed by her and the energy it takes to survive the weight [so to speak]. I have poured myself into this survival, and it's a feat that will quite likely not be reciprocated. It seems clear she's been broken. That in the significantly increased stress she faced, she found us severed. And while that is not an irreparable rift, she likely doesn't have the energy or will to try to repair it. I am waiting for a corpse. And even I cannot breathe life back into something that refuses, that needs to not live.

I am so hungry for intimacy. I want to try my body out, I want to enjoy physicality, I want to finally let someone inside me and let them see and touch and feel all of the knotted anguish I've kept ensconced for years. And I can cry and hurt and ache and let their touch and eyes show me that, truly, I am not the monster I have led myself to believe.

But, right now, she's only one who could come in. The only one who knows the way, has the key, could manage, endure, or desire it. And the fact that she is dead makes tragic an already desolate narrative. I am finally ready to open myself. But all I'd really be opening myself to is more vacant suffering. I guess I'd call that ironic.

Maybe that's why I don't want to go on medication. Because I feel, finally, so close to healing. I feel so close to breaking out of this dusky malaise and finally living in the brilliance I know life must be capable of. What's another month and a half to see if I'm wrong? The darkness will still be there to “fix” and “balance” when she's gone.

"When people stop being people, violence stops being tragic and starts to become the best means to any end."

That's it. That's the problem. That's my problem. For the duration of my life, I have not considered myself human.

It's why I can't talk about my needs.

It's why I live through others.

It's why I endure so much and never genuinely consider stopping because I can handle it, I can handle anything. I don't have weakness or need. My fallibility is entirely remediable and only exists because I am not good enough.

It's why I want people to use me, to hurt me, to disregard me.

It's why I don't judge myself by the same rules I judge others.

I am not people. And therefore violence done to my person is inconsequential, is acceptable, is necessary.

So it's pretty clear: I need to figure out how to accept myself as human, and all that entails. I guess I'd better get to work.

A response to this:

I'm drawn to so much of this blog because of that premise; that people are people and that, but for the grace of God go I in any given case.

But it's also what I use to try and forgive myself. When I look at people and systems and say "this is larger than one person," when people do terrible things and we can find a way to not utterly damn them, not reject them entirely, not leave them, it gives me hope for myself.

It's also an attitude I've had to cultivate. That request by Osama resonated with me, and, unsurprisingly, I went back to my own father. When he told me I couldn't come out to his parents, that I would either need to never see them again (and have them blame me for it), live a dehumanizing lie, or face the wrath of the one person who melts me into incoherent terror, when he says "They're *my* parents and I'm going to do what's best for them" as if I'm not his child, as if I'm not anything but a threat, I see the fixation.

He can't grok the terror he invokes, can't understand how telling a six year old "No, you don't love me" makes the child believe it's their fault they're not trying hard enough. Etcetera. We were not people but burdens, responsibilities, limitations. We were threats. And that is all the justification a person needs.

I am terrified of "going cold." That coldness is what allows that destruction, what allows people to stop seeing humanity and instead see enemies, see threats, see things to be feared, tossed aside, destroyed. I see in Osama's request that same coldness that is in the celebration of his death.

When people stop being people, violence stops being tragic and starts to become the best means to any end. Even when it starts so small. "Dangerous" only begins to describe it.

It is fairly obvious than I am not a healthy individual. I am jealous, insecure, self-loathing, depressed, suicidal, apathetic, distant, [I want to say pudgy], incompetent, and acerbic. That I recognize these things does not necessarily make them easier to cope with. I can recognize, for instance, that I feel immensely hurt when you pay attention to others before me because I 1) am insecure and fear you don't truly want to pay attention to me and 2) irrationally believe that you could do things differently despite no evidence to the contrary. It is so vital to you that I trust you, and yet I often find myself asking "What if it is all a lie?"

But it still hurts to see you in pictures with your arms around others, with them writing you messages of adoration, with so.many.people.loving you. I *know* I need to believe *you* first in lieu of my own demons, but it's really not about you. It's me.

It's me seeing rolls of fat on my stomach because I've gained 5 lbs.
It's me tearing down every picture of myself because I can't stand to see my face [or have it be seen].
It's me fantasizing about digging my nails into my face until blood runs down it in thin rivers.
It's being incompetent at even simple tasks.
It's not caring enough to get better.
It's feeling dead until I feel someone else's hurt, and I can feel alive again.

It's so much more, of course. And even now, it's better than it has been before. But my need for you is desperation. You make me feel real. You draw out more smiles, more laughter, more tears, more desire, more pain, more pleasure, more joy, more sorrow than anyone ever has. That I have been thrown into such melancholic thrashing is insomuch as your absence killing me. Or returning me to the dead.

I relive you like trauma. Again and again, I see your famished and fearful eyes devouring me, lips trembling before mine, inch by inch closer, as you melted and your boiling remains washed over me. And as our scabs were torn open, our pain flowed anew and in it we were inseparable in a joy so foreign as to be miraculous.

But we do separate. Again and again, I look down again and kiss you, one last time, in the dark rain. And you leave.

I started dying, then. I inhaled your eyes, your lips, but a small part of your unknowable intensity and doing so I breathed in life. But now, my tanks are low. These petty jealousies and fickle thoughts are gasps for air, searching for you amidst the vacuum your lips last left.

I'm dying. And as I claw and atrophy, I want to stop this infinite decline and trade one asphyxiation for another. I want to die, not dying. I want to breathe so deep that I will gasp no more.

I don't, of course. For though dying, I will not die. The undead need not air; they feast upon those who are alive. Never tasting with their own tongues, never feeling with their own skin, never loving with their own hearts. They feed and stumble along, recalling life in memories and fantasies.


I have held my breath for so long, surviving on the lives others. And in these moments, when I gasp again, I wonder if it will be the last. If I will have lungs to fill, if you're ever back to fill them.

{I made this comment on a board I frequent. Reposted so I'll remember it.}

[TW: abuse, violence, sexual assault]

Something seems hollow and inauthentic about my experiences as a male. I guess because I never really believed or embraced the gender; I was just pushed into it and barely went along to avoid the consequences of nonconformance. I hated being male and generally disliked other males for reasons far beyond the various manifestations of gendered violence. So when I speak poorly of the experience, there's a hefty grain of salt that needs to go along with it. But, nevertheless:

I hated being male so much. You can't be pretty or desired. You can't break down. You can't be emotional, unless you're angry. You hide all your pain, you joke all the time, and you present or you get swallowed.

Men are disgustingly violent towards women. But they're also profoundly violent against each other. I had "friends" my entire life hit me, constrain me, pinch me, jab me, pin me, take such pleasure in my pain. Whether it's inane competitions in video games, whether it's physically dominating me, whether it's "anything you can do, I can do better." Because they're always proving themselves. They're always clawing, always jockeying.

And when they're embarrassed, when they're defeated, when they're laughed out, when they're humiliated it's stored. And just like my father and so many others do, they let it out upon those who can't or won't fight back [so so often women]. They dominate you, show they're in control, let out every negativity upon you until it's clear that at least they're better than shit like you.

Such violence is gendered, but I know women and girls act it out, too. I was always surprised at the stark contrast between my slumber parties and my sister's: In hers, her disparate friend groups would divide into camps, literally demarcating sections of the house. Some who were acceptable to other camps could cross lines, could flit around, but the politicking was as passive-aggressive as it was still violent. In my slumber parties, guys just hit each other and let out all their aggressions in plain view. There were no politics. Just assertions.

All of this is to say that masculinity needs the deconstruction and liberation significant portions of femininity gained via feminism. Because when girls can cry and boys can't, the boys find other ways to express their pain. So much of their violence was the result of other violence; cultural violence saying they needed to prove themselves, modeled violence showing no other way to be, personal violence with every hurt every person inflicts upon another.

Hurt begets hurt, violence begets violence. My father was molested and never spoke about it, perhaps the biggest hurt in a life of them. He hated himself. He found himself in a point in life where everything was misery, where he fervently believed he was unlovable, where there was simply no hope. So he dominated his family, casting a blanket of fear over us with his very presence. My sister was the one whose hurt was so angry, who hit and screamed and clawed at me, my mother. And I internalized and used the violence to hurt myself. But it all trickles down.

That's why feminism, why social justice can't just be about one group. It's all or nothing. One person's hurt becomes everyone's hurt, one way or another. And masculinity is just one place where there's so, so much work left to be done.

[TW: Suicide]

When I was a sophomore in college, I would spend hours just researching ways to kill myself. It's trickier than you might think, if you want to do it in the way that is least traumatizing to others and most likely to kill you instead of dropping you in a painful and, more importantly, expensive limbo.

-Overdosing is notoriously ineffective. Whether it's bleach or pills, they can wreck havoc on your internal organs while still not killing you.
-Gun shots are particularly grizzly for the person who finds you and obtaining them can be problematic with the confrontation involved in a background check/purchase process, a particular obstacle for the average depressive. [fun fact: on average, women attempt suicide more often, but men actually commit it more often because men use lethal methods like gun wounds and women tend to overdose].
-It's difficult to gauge how effective falls can be, even if you can access a high enough point.
-Jumping from bridges into water is likely to make your body difficult/expensive to find [not to mention the pain of being paralyzed and then sinking into water to be drowned over the course of a fear minutes].
- Hanging has to be done right and can often be rather painful. Attempting to break one's neck is ideal instead of simply relying on asphyxiation, but if the cord snaps or something goes awry you can be injured enough to be significantly inconveniencing without actually succeeding.

Let me tell you a story.

Last week, at the abortion clinic I work at, I met a teenager named Amanda. Amanda, 16 years old, was the child of two alcoholics. Her father had long since left her. Her mother was neglectful and abusive. Amanda's mom's boyfriend picked a fight with Amanda. Amanda's mom, of course, sided with her boyfriend. Just as she had always sided against Amanda. Just as everyone had sided against Amanda.

Amanda had a friend at school. This friend was a good friend. The friend's mom knew Amanda's situation was bad. So she did the courageous act so many of us are tempted to do but never do: she took Amanda in. She got Amanda's power of attorney. She fed Amanda. Kept Amanda safe. And made Amanda feel like, maybe, she didn't need to be afraid all the time.

When Amanda was younger, Amanda's mom didn't care where Amanda went for days at a time. Amanda would go to parties and do lots of drugs, alcohol, and boys. Searching, always searching, for the love she never had. For the person who wouldn't give up on her. Drugs, alcohol, and boys are hard. And they often hurt. Amanda figured this out and cut back. She worked in a vet's office. She dreamed of becoming a vet someday. She'd go to college, pursue her dream career path, be a good mother and be loved by a good man.

She found a boyfriend. Her mom didn't like him. Her friend's mom, who had taken her in, didn't like him. He was on probation. He got a DUI on probation. He was likely to go to prison. He was 19. He got Amanda pregnant.

Her friend's mom panicked. She couldn't take care of a baby. Amanda surely couldn't take care of a baby. Amanda needed to not have a baby. Amanda's mom agreed.  They said she should have a regular high school life. She should have a prom, have friends, have few responsibilities. She should be young and free. One cannot be free with a baby.

Amanda did not care. Amanda had never been young. Amanda had never been free. Amanda did not know what that meant. Amanda did not want to be young and free. Amanda did not care about being young and free. Amanda knew there was much more to life than that.

They said if she had the baby, her boyfriend would get arrested for statutory rape.  She didn't want her child's father to to prison. She didn't want her child to not have a father. She loved her boyfriend. She thought he loved her. She didn't want an abortion. She said she'd get an abortion.

Her friend's mom and her friend took her to our abortion clinic. We talked to Amanda. Amanda did not want to have an abortion. If you don't want to have an abortion, we will not give you an abortion. Her boyfriend was not guilty of statutory rape. We told Amanda. She no longer thought she wanted an abortion.

We talked to Amanda awhile. Amanda was a minor. Amanda was in a bad situation. I talked to Amanda for awhile. Because I talk to teenagers. I talk to everyone. I liked Amanda.

After four hours of waiting and hearing nothing, we told Amanda's friend's mom. And by "we" I mean "my boss" because I knew there would be anger and lots of yelling. I don't handle anger and yelling well.

Amanda's friend's mom was furious. She said we had convinced Amanda not to have an abortion. She did not say it. She screamed it.

I almost started crying. My boss said that was not true: Amanda did not want to have the abortion. She only agreed because she was afraid for her boyfriend.

"YOU HAVE DELUDED HER. WHAT HAVE THEY TOLD YOU? THAT YOU CAN HAVE THIS CHILD? WE CAN'T AFFORD A BABY, AMANDA. YOU CAN'T HAVE A BABY. THINK OF SOMEONE BESIDE YOURSELF. THINK OF YOUR CHILD. YOU CAN'T HAVE THIS BABY."

An hour ago, I told Amanda that things would be very difficult. I told Amanda to not expect her boyfriend to help. I told Amanda that it would make her dreams quite difficult. I told Amanda it wasn't impossible. I should have been there to tell her friend's mom. To stand between the rage and Amanda. To protect her.

I wasn't. I didn't. I couldn't. I listened from another room and tried not to cry instead.

"WHEN YOU HAVE SEX WITH TWELVE DIFFERENT GUYS AND LET THEM ALL CUM IN YOU AND DO DRUGS AND LET THEM ALL COME IN, WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO HAPPEN?"

"HE'S DIFFERENT."

"HE IS GOING TO PRISON. HE WILL BE BACK IN PRISON. YOU CAN'T HAVE THIS KID."

The other office workers talked. "Do you think she should have this kid? It sounds like she does a lot of drugs and sleeps around."   "No, I don't think she should."  "What kind of life would that kid have?"

I didn't say anything.

"YOU HAVE RUINED THIS FAMILY AGAIN, AMANDA. YOU HAVE RUINED THIS FAMILY AGAIN."

Two hours ago, I had asked Amanda why she wanted to have the child. And she said, "I thought about having the abortion, but then I thought about my child. And I felt like I would be abandoning it just like my parents, just like everyone had abandoned me. And I want to do better than them. I want to be better than them."

"FINE, JUST KILL THE FUCKER. KILL THE LITTLE FUCKER. GET IT OVER WITH."

"OH, THAT'S JUST GREAT AMANDA. VERY DRAMATIC."

They were ushered outside. We needed to close. We should have closed an hour ago. There was more screaming outside. None of them had stopped crying since we told Amanda's friend's mom. We started to close.

I left work. Amanda's friend and Amanda's friend's mom had walked across the street, into the park, to talk about what was going to happen. Amanda was crying, by herself, alone. I asked my boss if she thought it would be ok if I went and talked to her. My boss said I could if I wanted to.

I did.

I asked Amanda if she wanted me to leave her alone or if she wanted to talk. Her tear-stained face looked at me. She said she didn't care.

I stayed.

"I called my mom and asked her if she'd put me in a home. And she said she would. I don't want to go to a home, I don't want to go."

I said nothing.

We had talked about resources. She mainly needed someone to stay with. We didn't know what was available. I started to say there must be a safe place for pregnant moms to go. I stopped because I knew I was speaking from privileged hope, not reality.

"Family is supposed to love you no matter what. That's what family is supposed to be."

I said nothing.

Amanda mentioned, when we talked about potential career paths for her, in our little bubble before we had talked to her friend's mom, before she told her mom, before she got close to giving birth, Amanda mentioned that she wanted to start a nonprofit organization that would support children of alcoholics, children in abusive situations. Amanda wanted to create an organization like that. Her father said there was one in California, where he lived, that would even drive to pick those interested up.

I said I didn't know what was possible. I asked Amanda if she had considered social work.

"I finally thought I had found a stable place to live. I finally thought I was in a good place. And now everyone hates me."

The tears suppressed more words. I wanted to hold her. I didn't.

I thought it was true. I told her I'd only known her a few hours, but I liked her. I told her the people she was with would leave her. That everyone would leave her, sooner or later. That it was going to be really hard. That I didn't know what was possible. That she would do what she had always done: survive.

I told her that the only person who would never leave her was herself. And that that was who she had to get right with.

"I kind of wish they would leave me. I kind of wish they'd all leave me."

Her friend and her friend's mom started walking back towards the car.

"I can't handle the yelling, so I'm going to go. I'm sorry, Amanda. I really do like you."

I reached my car as they reached Amanda. I didn't look at them. I didn't look back. I drove away. I left Amanda to carry the weight of the world upon her shoulders alone. I left her because I could. I left her. Even when I knew she could never leave.

On Monday, my boss talked to the HOPE pregnancy crisis center across the street. The one that does "free pregnancy testing." The one that shows you pictures of dead fetuses. The one that is "pro-life."

My boss asked them what services they had for young pregnant girls. They could give her a carseat, they said. They could give her some formula, they said. My boss asked if they had housing available. Or daycare. They said she could earn diapers by going to classes.

I left Amanda. Like everyone had left Amanda, I left her too. And as I drove away without looking back, I cried. I cried because I lived in a world, I was part of this world that left Amanda crying on the sidewalk in front of the abortion clinic, hated and unloved for doing what she felt was right. Doing for her child what no one else, what we had never done for her.

(Per Tyler's suggestion to use bullet points.)

-I'm tired. Exhausted. And I work at 8a tomorrow. For all my lack of fulfillment being unemployed, I got more and better sleep than ever before. Now I'm back to 5-7 hours a night and being exhausted/nervous most nights a week.

- I really like Bloomington. I've felt for awhile that most of the people I talk to don't speak the same language as I've increasingly done, and there so many of them "got it" or seemed receptive to "getting it." I'm starved for more.

- All the professors really seemed to care about was research. Which wasn't surprising, but I had kind of hoped counseling psychologists would be better listeners/facilitators of dialogue than what I saw.

- I cry when I imagine/have people saying they love/care about me and mean it. And by "mean it" I mean "I believe it."

It doesn't happen often at all.

-Governor's School is still the only place I've ever felt appreciated for being smart/engaging/me.

- I think I set myself up to be in situations where I have to compromise because I don't want the disappoint of finding a great fit/solution and not having it pan out. Also, I don't think such things exist.  It's tempting to think I'd be appreciated/fit somewhere. But, other than GSSE, I never have.

- I really like asking questions. And I care about the answers to [almost] all the questions I ask.

- I really wish other people did the same.

- I don't think I'll get into Indiana. And I'm preemptively bitter about it. I felt like a really good candidate. But I'm terrible at "The Game." And I'm really not sure there was anyone on the faculty who won't let the latter dominate the former.

- I have very little understanding of how other people conceive of me. I think I just assume pretty much everyone doesn't have a conception of me at all, that I don't merit one. I'm probably wrong.

[Trigger Warning: Mention of sexual assault, abuse, and after effects. Not explicit.]

I've often wondered why, exactly, I seem to resonate more with victims of abuse and the way they think/see the world than that of others.  While, certainly, my living situation was difficult, and I was constantly afraid, what I *feared* was never something that happened.  I was never beaten; no more than a skant few spankings.  I was never, have never been sexually assaulted or abused.  My needs were never neglected.  I was never told I was worthless.  And while I certainly deeply internalized various signals that my parents gave me which indicated nothing less than perfection was acceptable (and even that was simply what was expected), I don't think I ever really pushed or challenged such notions.  I never rebelled, I never fought back.  Never, against anyone but my mother, and even that was often because anger seems to be the only thing that makes her ever stop or change.

It wasn't until just thinking about it, though, that I realized my worldview is inherited from my father.  I, of course, already knew that.  One of my favorite stories from high school is when everyone in one of my classes was asked to describe one other person in the class for a new teacher and then we guessed who was being described.  At least 25% of the class wrote some variant of "cynical" for me.  I was surprised not only because they'd singled me out more than my peers, but also because I didn't think my skepticism was that obvious and memorable.  After all, how could anyone think anything else?

But "cynical," really, only captures part of it.  I didn't merely expect people to act selfishly.  I expected people to hurt others, intentionally or out of neglect, simply because that's the way the world worked. You could never trust anyone, you always had to have documentation to defend yourself, copies upon copies and always receipts. Your family would not protect, your friends would leave you when it was convenient, you were alone and lonely and while you would be nice to people it was largely because they'd hurt you if you weren't. And partly it was because people are ignorant and selfish. And partly it was because you're as bad or worse than they are.

I think that's how my father viewed/views the world. Through the lens of sexual abuse. A lens that is constantly dark, constantly fearful, constantly seeing threats in everyone, constantly seeing worthless and abject monstrosity whenever turned inward. "Love" is a word people say because they're supposed to care. But it doesn't mean a damn when it comes to protecting you.

If you met my father, he would probably smile a lot. And laugh. And he'd do innocuously sweet things like make it a priority to give treats to animals and buy things for you. You'd probably never see him angry, never see him yell or rage, never see him kick the same animals whenever they got in his way. He is an actor. Just like I learned to be. An actor who projects what's "good" so no one can see the immense pain, the immense fear, the immense resentment inside. An actor who tries to ensure you have no need to see the real person inside, a person you will undoubtedly leave and reject.

To an extent, that's me reading myself into him. But it's also me knowing where I come from. I have the worldview of the abused because that's who taught me what the world was like.

But I was not abused. Thank God. I was not abused, and I have the privilege of hope. I can believe that things can get better. But I also know that horrible things happen. I know that while my father's worldview, my worldview, is dark, it's dark because of what *has happened.* Not what could happen or might happen, but what *has* happened. Rapes, murders, torture, neglect, bitter isolation, learned self-hate, more more more, they *happen.* So much more often than the vast majority of us think.

Most people only care abstractly until it affects them, if at all. They don't "get it." And then when your loved one is afflicted or attacked, you look around and often have a hard time understanding why no one else is as pissed off about it as you are. Why no one else is as afraid, no one else is as confused, no one else seems to feel like you.

I don't want to be that way. I don't want to wait until I'm affected by something to care about it. I don't want to be a part of the problem until I have a reason to be part of the solution. Because I know that horrible things happen. I know that people suffer in ways to extents most of us privileged folk cannot, hopefully will not ever be able to imagine. And I don't want anyone else to end up like my father.  Because although he may be right, that people hurt each other, that people aren't trustworthy, that people are people, I haven't been hurt yet to the point that I think people are irredeemable.  I have the privilege of believing we can do better, we can be better. And if I believe it, then I don't see any other solution but to make that belief a reality. Or lose my hope trying.