anyway, a ramble.

I don’t have a lot to say, but let’s try anyway.

I remember riding across West Texas during what must have been the later stages of the 2016 presidential election. I remember the strange sensation of hope and fear that I had then: surely this couldn’t be possible but surely something else could be. A better America, a country built on the promise of something new, not some old and seething hatred.

I had a panic attack this morning and I’ve been nauseous all day. Yesterday I told my psychiatrist that my depression was at a 1-2 out of 10. I’m aware of the endless contradictions and juxtapositions of life: the good next to the unfathomably awful.

In therapy, I’ve been working on my feeling of being loved. In therapy I am trying to erase the sensation of feeling unlovable that’s etched deep into the bones of any gay kid who crew up in a smallish town oblivious to the queer world around him. Each session I walk through my past, charting these moments of pain that have convinced me that some integral part of me does not belong in this world; and is not worthy of anyone’s love.

EMDR works for me because it can almost feel like a metaphor. Or, it works for me because I can recreate the scenes in my head and act them out in new ways. In one session I watch myself like a mirror, turning the frame to capture what else might be missing. In another, I work the courage up to say what I feel. I have been building to something and it’s taken a lot of work. I’ve been building up myself session by session, day by day. I have been writing love stories to try and understand my overwhelming love for those around me. For years I ran away from the feeling. It felt stupid to want people that way, to desire a life with someone, to crave their affection, attention, and a place in their world. I wanted to be cool. I wanted people to be drawn to me. I, stupidly, assumed I needed only to be loved to be worthy of the world.

When my grandmother was dying, or at least when she thought she was dying, we went to see her in a hospital room. I remember the sensation of restlessness as she pulled each of us aside, no doubt trying to impart some words of wisdom before her untimely death. I don’t remember everything she said, and what I do remember is clouded by the fog of childhood. There’s a good chance that none of the memory is accurate and instead was just carefully constructed by my subconscious to help me cope with grief and depression.

Anyway, I remember her telling me I would make someone happy one day—the someone being important there, a coded message to gay me that she somehow new and affirmed my identify before I had even accepted it. For a while after her death I clung to that like a mantra or a promise. I was convinced it was something I had to do, a special task she had imparted to me. Then, in the midst of my depression, I was convinced it was an ironic curse. How could I make someone else happy when I wasn’t happy?

When I got older, I started going to therapy. When I got older, I started taking anti-depressants. Through the combination of those two factors I slowly unwravled the anxieties and insecurities that had plagued and stifled me. As cliche as it sounds, I started looking inward at who I wanted to be. Then when I went back to therapy this last year, I stopped looking only at who I wanted to be. I started looking at who I already am and who I was before the normal events of the world carved sharp edges into the softness of my body.

It was reletatively recently that I understood more of what she meant. Or rather, that she didn’t mean anything at all. I think, if anything, she recognized that part of me that I had been hiding: the person longing not to be loved but to love. In that moment she was identifying a trait in me: you’ll make someone happy because that’s ultimately what you want to do.

I woke up this morning sobbing. I woke Zach up actually and the two of us shared that space, Cookie laying between us, oblivious to our own suffering but happy to help out in anyway he could. I thought about the people that will be hurt by this administration. I thought about my friends, my family, and people I’ve never even met. I thought about trans people and people of color and immigrants and I thought about what, if anything I could do to make things better. I don’t think I have that answer, I don’t think any of us do right now.

I am certain about one thing though, I’m not going to hide my love for folks anymore. I’m going to try as hard as I can to love as much as I can. I’m going to love my partner, my friends, my family, my co-workers. I’m going to try and bring people together, to create a space that’s safe from the cruelty of the world. I’m not going to be naive about the harshness that’s out there, but I won’t let it turn me hard. I won’t let it take me under.

There’s a lot we need to do politically and culturally to change things. We can start that work soon, tomorrow really. We can demand justice, we can demand attention. We can demand that our voices be heard beyond our stacked votes or endlessly right-tilted system of government. We can protest and yell. We can refuse to comply with unjust laws. We can cut out friends and family who dare demonize someone else to make themselves feel better. We will need a hardness to do this, an edge, a resolve of stone, but right now, today at least, we can choose to find strength in our softness.