Openness
Someone new and worthwhile on the friends list posted something very honest and revealing about a very complicated sort of situation with a very complicated person with the two of them having a very complicated history. And if anyone can relate to that sort of thing...
That touched me. A lot. And I wrote something back that was more honest than I historaically have been, for a lot of reasons that ultimately are stupid to me now, but always have boiled down to one thing and one thing only: FEAR. I've known fear since before I knew what fear was, since before I knew I was an entity. Since before I could speak. And it's never gone away, really. It's ruled my life, in bad an ugly ways, and some good people (and some not so good people) have paid for it along the way.
So here's what I wrote. I'd write it differently today, even so short a time after having actually written it; it's been a very interesting, and life-changing, week for me, in ways I will probably not fully understand for years, but in some ways, I know it more now than I'd ever known anything before this week -- nothing except, maybe, fear. So, here you go.
This is a part of you I didn't know at all, and I am humbled and honored that you would share it with me. First, thank you for that trust and openness, even if some of it surely comes from being far, far outside the situation.
This has been one of the most heart-wrenching things I have read in a very long time, for me. I had a best friend like that once, although things were not really quite the same... She had a horrible father and a mother who was silent for too long, but was trying to make it up to her, and we were best friends, as adults (we only met as adults, but neither of us was as adult as our years would have implied), and she saw me through many of the hardest times in my life. My own fears of giving myself fully and getting so hurt, and my own fears of being alone and falling without anyone to catch me, led me to be blind, and in my blindness hopelessly cruel without really knowing it (growing up an utter social misfit without knowing or understanding why I was hated screwed up my sense of self-judgment pretty thoroughly, along with incest from both parents and blah blah blah... Gravitating to women who had also been hurt and who naturally hid their feelings about things without even being aware of it very often just made it that much worse, and the backlash, when it came, was usually filled with fury and hatred). She and I were supposed to be married. Her mom loved me. I loved both of them. I wanted it more than anything. And I royally fucked it all up, did unforgivable things because I could not be patient, I could not understand, and I could not see past my own fear of falling.
She's married now, with the big house with the wraparound porch she always wanted. She might have that daughter she and I had talked so much about having, I really don't know. She stopped speaking to me years ago, and made it clear she never wanted to hear from me again, after I tried to become her friend again and in my abject guilt tried to ease my own horrid discomfort with the state of things and having to live with it every day as we interacted by pressing forward to opening lines of communication and ventilating things as quickly as I could manage. And that was faster than she wanted, and she made it clear that it was my own failure to let her take her own pace with things that had caused the initial break, and that this was essentially the last straw, and that I had made her eternal shit list from which no one has ever returned.
I don't bring out her memory very often, because it reminds me of things about myself I hate, things done I hate myself for having done, and the knowledge that inevitably settles down on me like the weight of a million dead albatross that I was the one who ruined what could have been everything I'd ever really wanted, and I might not be a depressed, struggling mostly cripple trying to survive on half of Federal poverty level while the fear built in me that I might soon not even have the strength to choose to pull my own plug if things ever got too ugly (which was always how I dealt with facing ugly future without support and just my own self to go on, and perhaps it wasn't always that way and to some degree may be not now, but I can't escape the all-encompassing fear that at the end of the day, I can't trust anyone but myself to be able or willing to do anything for me).
Even apart from not getting to raise my own children, formerly my largest regret in the world, this one always stands alone as my biggest shame, my biggest failing, and my biggest cause of my own demise for which I can and have been responsible. And that's taken a really large toll on me, even as I've been searching desperately for the things that I'd been chasing all along; a place to belong, someone to belong to and with who was there for everything, good and bad, and something to get out of bed for in the morning, wonder and magic and hope and the feeling that maybe it had all somehow been worth it, if only because someone was showing me how to be who I should have learned how to be as a child, and that that was all right, that they didn't mind parts of me being three years old and that they had parts that were maybe three years old and they understood, and they wanted to show me what they'd learned and learn what I'd figured out. The childhood friend I'd never had, I guess.
I had what I'd thought was finally a great shot at that, and I fucked that one up, too. Of course, I don't really know how much she fucked that one up and how much I did, and she hates me so much (whether it's me, or her own shortcomings, or she's assigned anger to me for things done to her by others, I can't say, and maybe never will be able to) that all I have ever seen since then is the hatred, which is all I have really ever gotten from most people, after all is said and done (And there's a recurring theme with female survivors of child abuse coming to me because I accept them (as much as I can accept anyone) as exactly who they are, without preconceived expectations, taking them at face value, and then having them become violently angry and hateful at some lack I apparently present afterward, whether borne of their unspoken expectations or through me not following through on promises I'm not aware I am making). But that was serious blow #2, and I have been, in my own need to have something solid to hang on to and not being willing to grab onto any old whim just out of panic and hope it will save me, in counting on the pessimist's course not only because of the pain and searing memories of failure but because it has always, always turned out that way for me before in almost everything I have done, I have been honestly unable to believe that, at 40 and sick, poor, in debt, battling the universe daily just to remain able to exist, and filled with regrets, still being in some ways a child and certainly finding it impossible to believe I've been here for 40 years, I will get any more chances to ever go anywhere but down the deepening spiral. No light, no hope, no joy. The things I loved that kept me alive for so long have been taken slowly from me, and I really have none left, although I go through many of the motions and at least try to connect with those things, that passion, somehow, again.
Well. That was a lot more of me than I had planned on sharing, and my own story took some rather significant turns away from yours. I'm sorry to have run off on my own (selfish) tangents there.
I guess all this means that there's a very kinky poly pagan weirdo bisexual coyote with a partner as odd as he is in her own way who gets it, who understands, who howls the moon with you when you can't sleep.
Julia's awesome. She only connects with incredibly awesome people. I met Julia through my partner Eradea. And everyone I have known who is connected with Julia or through Julia is just incredible. I imagine Julia may well know a whole lot more about me than she has learned through direct contact; I really wouldn't know. Maybe I'm not quite as bad as I sometimes think I am if people like her and you trust me, to whatever degree. At least I try, and I mean it, which I guess is a lot more than a lot of people.
So, hi. My name is Adam. I can usually be found around the intertubes as Azraphale. It's damned beautiful to meet you. IF you ever come south to see the giant redwoods and the cold, foggy NorCal coast between Portland and the Bay area, I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee. Or have you bring a smile and some crazy magic to the spare room here. I might even shed a tear on your shoulder if the stars align and I'm feeling that vulnerable and open -- and that'd make you witness to something very rare indeed.
*gentle hug* Thanks. For sharing, for listening, and for being who you are. It's good to know there are people like you out there.
I somewhere have some more to say about some of our similarities and differences in experience and feeling and how we think about and interface with other people, but I'm totally spent, you're probably really tired of reading this, possibly are a little (or more than a little) alarmed at all this being poured out, and I do still have a few important real-world things to take care of before business ends at 5 pm. So I really need to wash myself so I don't look like an animal that just had sex involving a certain amount of bloodletting, put on my leathers, and haul my carcass out on the motorcycle to run errands (Gods, I hate losing riding, but I REALLY need the truck to be fixed -- it hurts too much, I can't pay full enough attention for me to feel I am able to truly "guarantee" my own safety through not missing anything while on the road on a motorcycle, and frankly, it's getting Pacific Northwet (no s) wintry out these days and my crumbling body can't take the cold and damp at 70 mph any more.
I know it hurts. Hang in there. You're beautiful and brilliant (luminescent as well as smart), and even if nothing ever changes and you have a permanent dark part of your heart, that's not enough to stop you from being you. Because at the end of the day, with or without anyone else, even if people are gone (and my other best friend, the one who never questioned and never turned away, committed suicide almost three years ago to the day without a word to anyone beforehand), we are still who we are. We may be (and probably are) forever changed because of their presence, their shaping of us, and the things we learned both with them and because of their leaving, but we are still ourselves, and always, always will be.
Peace.