Anniversaries of You

I miss the years that were erased
I miss the way the sunshine would light up your face
I miss all the little things
I never thought that they’d mean everything to me
Yeah, I miss you
And I wish you were here

“From Where You Are” by Lifehouse

Today (technically yesterday, since it’s past midnight and I’m up late, again, thinking of her…) was the 4 year anniversary of when Summer and I started dating officially. Earlier in the week was the anniversary of our first kiss, our first date, and first time I fell asleep with her in my arms.

I miss so many things about her. How she loved watermelon and grapes, the love in her beautiful eyes, the way she’d walk around with headphones on almost skipping happily to whatever she was listening to, learning to play guitar with her, holding hands, her gentle soul… I could go on and on talking about how amazing of a person she was, how much reminds me of her, and what I miss… but I do that countless times every day anyway. My mind essentially tortures me with thoughts of having lost her, reminders of her and everything we had, and longing for her.

I also wake up thinking about and missing her, and it takes almost everything I have to get out of bed every day and face the world without her. I struggle every night to fall asleep because of thoughts of her – I even hold one of my pillows and pretend it’s her, hoping and praying to any god(s) who will listen to bring her back to me.

But days like today… special days… days of anniversary, are the worst. Many of them just happen to also be holidays. This year, as I head into (or I guess continue through) the holiday season, I’m feeling the burden of what we had even more than usual because I’m living alone, I have at most two friends I get to see infrequently, and very few family to spend time with. Family… whatever the hell that means.

Had we stayed together, we would have had so many good times. Of that I’m sure… It hurts so much knowing that we’ve been forced apart and that she’s likely experienced much of life without me by her side. Supporting her, loving her, protecting and guiding her… We had literally planned for years in advance, talking about how she would move in with me when she was able, getting married, having and raising kids, and just sharing our lives with one another. But now… well, all of that’s gone, and I can’t face that reality most days.

It hurts too much.

I don’t know what the hell the point of writing any of this is. I doubt she will ever read it, and if she did, she would probably be so sad to read how I’m basically broken now without her… She made me promise that I wouldn’t do something bad (like hurting myself or suicide) if something happened to us, and I know that came from her love for me… but many days I wish I hadn’t made that promise, or that I was less of a man and could break it.

But for now, until I see her again, I’ll continue on. Despite the pain. Despite slowly losing hope. Despite the personal hell…

Because she’s worth it.

Featured image source

Helloween, part 2

As I’ve said before, I am trying to sort of reclaim Halloween as mine. It’s still my favorite holiday, never mind the fact that I haven’t really celebrated it or decorated in nearly a decade… Though I am really struggling to see a point in reclaiming it. Whether that’s because I still have (and likely will always have) self-worth issues, or because I don’t have anyone to celebrate it with, I don’t know. Regardless, the holiday has changed for me quite a bit in recent years.

For one thing, because of my past, I am not able to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. It wouldn’t be illegal to do so or anything, but for my own safety and protection, I simply can’t do it.

Another thing is that I used to be Wiccan or eclectic Pagan, and I no longer follow that path. Perhaps it’s because of the rituals or because I’ve lost a lot of faith in general, but I can’t really get into everything that goes along with a belief system right now.

I’ve thought about throwing a party and inviting people over, but who would I invite? I have maybe two real-life friends at best now, and have been shutting people out quite a bit. Both for their safety and for my own needs, growth, and a bit of isolation. (I’m still working on the last bit…) There’s no point in throwing a party when nobody will show up. I did that a couple years when I was with my ex wife and it was disappointing to see how few people genuinely cared and wanted to be around me.

I’ve thought about going out too, but I have too much anxiety and I don’t “party” like many people. I don’t drink or smoke or do drugs. I don’t enjoy loud, obnoxious, chaotic social environments. I’d rather cuddle up with a lover and a movie than I would go to some wild party or a bar. And I can’t go to BDSM clubs anymore, again because of my past. So there’s no point in going out either.

Something else that I have to deal with is that I shared my love of the holiday with my ex wife and a lot of things I would do, I did with her (like throwing parties, spooky food, etc). I’m also reminded of my ex girlfriend, Summer because of events that transpired around this time of year, and specifically ON Halloween. There are a lot of love-related reminders surrounding the holiday. That alone is enough to make me want to curl up in a ball and never leave my bed…

Finally, dressing up and using makeup to do so reminds me of my sperm donor father, who used to be into that as well. It reminds me of at least one Halloween during my childhood of dressing up as a werewolf (complete with face fur) at my grandma’s to go out trick-or-treating. I only have the briefest of glimpses of that, but I do remember it.

So I guess I’m just kind of wondering what the point of it all is and why I “should” want to celebrate it for myself. And the further I dig, the more I’m coming up with reasons for why I’ve celebrated it in the past for others. Is this really my holiday?

Or is this just another reason I’ve used to feel needed and wanted by others?

I genuinely don’t know…

Summer Love, part 4

This series is a detailed account of my relationship with the greatest love of my life so far, my niece. This is an honest, factual, first-hand recounting of events from my perspective, though names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.

You know, it’s funny… No, not funny in a “ha ha” way, but more of funny in a “hmm” curious kind of way… It’s funny how some times in our lives stretch out for years when they’re only weeks or months, and then others it seems like if we blink, we’d miss entire years.

My time with Melanie was, much of the time, the former, whereas my time with Summer was very much the latter. Even in the months leading up to our relationship, the time with her just seemed to fly by. No matter if we were watching movies, doing musical things, being intimate, or just sitting and talking over dinner, it was always not enough time and went by so quickly. Thinking back on how things progressed from her individual visit to us dating, it seems crazy that everything that happened was only in a three month time span.

During this time, Melanie and I really had major issues. Not even a month after Summer’s visit, I finally made the decision to separate because things were only getting worse. We had been to multiple couples’ therapy sessions (with the therapist I had been seeing individually) and Melanie just didn’t understand me anymore. She wasn’t willing to budge on the one thing that I truly wanted going forward in relationships – she had suddenly decided that she was strictly monogamous, and I had grown into my polyamorous self. There isn’t any sort of compromise that would have made both of us happy in the end, so the only thing to do was to end it.

At a couple different points there was some talk about having Summer and Little Scott out for another visit, but with the issues Melanie and I were having, it just wasn’t a good time. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to see Summer again, I had to get things in order with me and my life first. Since Melanie and I were “apart,” I went out to the event they had in honor of Allie’s mom. I helped to decorate the place some, though it was a small gathering in a hall with food and some tables. The whole time I just wanted to hold Summer and comfort her, but I knew that wasn’t okay to do, especially around everyone there. I did give her a long hug and told her that if she needed anything at all that I was there for her, which made her smile a little at least. At the event, Summer’s birth mom was there, and I remembered thinking to myself (before I was even introduced or told who it was) that she was a bit heavy weight-wise, but was actually a very beautiful woman. After a little while, I started to get the usual sadness that I sometimes do from being alone in a crowd, and opted to say my farewells and head out. I don’t remember getting to say a very long goodbye with Summer, and I remember feeling even worse after leaving because of that.

I continued to live with Melanie for about a month. The whole time I was sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms on a futon, and Summer was extremely supportive of me. Not even my “best friend” at the time, Brandon, was as supportive of me and what I wanted, and he and I had been very similar in our ideas about love. Summer was young and inexperienced in relationships but even she could see how being with Melanie was hurting me deeply because of our incompatibility.

Sadly, again, tragedy struck, and Allie’s birth mother passed away. Again I was pulled away from work by a random phone call, this time from Summer herself. She was devastated that she had lost another grandparent. There was not much I could do, but I was able to at least calm her down and make her feel less despondent about it while we were on the phone.

I finally decided to get my own place and figure out where I was going in life from there. Of course, being the wonderful person she is, Summer asked Allie and Big Scott if they could help me move again, and they agreed. Most of the move itself I did on my own with my car, though the larger items I made sure to get a moving truck for. I believe the only things they ended up helping with were the larger items and moving them into my new place. Every time I would walk past Summer as we moved items into and out of the truck, I could feel my heart speed up from its already-rapid pace. I was genuinely happy to simply have her near me. If I remember correctly, one of the boxes she ended up moving was the one that I had my sex toys in, and I secretly wished she would be nosy about what was in it, but then dismissed the thought forcefully. I wished they could stay longer so I could have more time with Summer, but they all had to go help someone else move and left shortly after.

In all this time, Summer and I had started talking almost daily, about a lot of things. One day shortly after getting home from work, she randomly called me out of the blue. I saw her name on my phone and my heart leaped for joy! I answered, and immediately I could tell something was wrong. She was on the verge of tears, and could barely get out that she needed help. I started to panic, but I knew the first priority was to calm her down. I had to figure out what was going on so I could help, no matter what it took!

After a bit of soothing and making her feel a little bit more at ease, she finally was able to tell me what happened. She was apparently freaking out because she had been looking at porn sites, and one of them would not stop popping up porn ads on her (school) computer. She started begging me not to tell her parents because she believed they were going to “kill” her or at least ground her for a very long time, and then she wouldn’t be able to talk with me anymore. When she told me that, I was pretty surprised, but not totally. Something told me that she wasn’t the innocent girl that she led people to believe, and this was a confirmation of that. Regardless, she was in a panic and needed my help. Right away I went into (what I later learned to be) “Daddy” mode. I made sure to calm her down again and said that it’s okay, I knew what she was going through, and that we could fix it. I went through some tech troubleshooting steps, had her turn it off and back on, then download something to remove the popups at a minimum until we could do more to fix it. A couple hours later via email messages we finally got things to an okay state, and then she had to go to bed. I believe she may have said that she loved me for helping and I know she thanked me immensely.

After that point, we started email messaging multiple times a day with one another, both while I was at work and at home. Things really took a deeper turn. We were talking more about sexual topics since we didn’t have to watch what we said via emails because her parents didn’t know about the emails she was using to talk to me. They would constantly monitor all of her communications, and had such a tight stranglehold on Summer and Little Scott’s lives that they could barely go to the bathroom without an interrogation. Once we were able to talk more freely, I learned just how deep this controlling and manipulation went. It was extremely bad, and I would have reported it, but Summer begged me not to because she feared that she would be taken away and wouldn’t be able to see either of her brothers that lived with other people.

It was during this time that I had learned about the trauma and abuse she had experienced as a young child. Her birth mother had apparently been a drug addict and an alcoholic, and had relationships with men who were abusive. They never touched Summer in any way, but they did force her to watch her brothers get beaten severely and threatened that it would happen to her if she wasn’t good. I also learned that Summer occasionally thought she heard voices (which she was afraid to tell anyone else about because she didn’t want to be “crazy”), and that she was constantly afraid of everything and frequently had nightmares. Finding out all of this only made me feel more protective of her and made me want to hold her and try my best to make everything alright again for her. Knowing now what I do about mental health issues, I realize that I couldn’t have possibly “fixed” anything with her, though I am positive that if we had the chance to stay together, I could have helped her in some way…

At some point in those few crazy months (though I don’t recall exactly when), there was an event that their brainwashing “Ilicet” play people hosted called “Rock & Bowl” at a bowling alley where everyone dressed up in 80s-style outfits and bowled to “Rock” music. I was really nervous about going because I didn’t really have anything 80s to wear, but I remember seeing Summer in her neon, Madonna-inspired outfit and being stunned at how “rad” she looked! It was just about all I could do to not choke on my own heart beating in my throat. I even complimented her on it and she blushed and bashfully deflected my comment. We took some pictures together, though I no longer have them because I was a fool and deleted all of our pictures at one point after everything blew up…

And boy, did they blow up, big time… (To be continued.)

Mental Health Self-Talk

Lately I’ve been having some issues with my depression, which seem to coincide with some of the blog posts I’ve been making about my past. As a result of the memories I’m intentionally (and sometimes forcefully) dredging up, my mood has lowered to the point of occasionally being non-functional. For me, this typically means oversleeping, not doing regular chores like laundry and dishes, dissociating and avoiding reality as much as possible by watching movies and TV shows, playing games, and generally being unresponsive to life.

Along with all of that also comes very negative self-talk. I’ll tell myself that I’m worthless, unlovable, and that there isn’t a point to the things I enjoy. I’ve recently been trying to reclaim Halloween since it has always been my favorite holiday by decorating. At least a couple of the days lately I’ve looked at the decorations that are animated and usually turned off (to save power), and went “what’s the point in putting all of this up if nobody’s around to enjoy it?”

A lot of my self-talk tends to be negative or self-defeating. I have been trying to change this. I have written affirmations in my bathroom mirror so I see them every time I go to the bathroom or take a shower. I have written down things I like about myself and put it on my dry-erase board. I have tried my best to look at the positive things and what I’ve accomplished rather than focus on the negative things or how far I still need to go. I take antidepressants daily. I’m working and I keep myself busy with house work, which helps me to feel at least somewhat productive. It is extremely difficult, however. Especially when you don’t have someone there to support you and help you see where your thinking has gone wrong.

Summer used to be that shining light in the darkness for me. She showed me the good parts of me and actually helped me to love myself even when I showed my darkest side. I’m trying without her and without anyone else because I am told that’s what you’re supposed to do, but really I still have a hard time seeing why I need to love myself without someone else.

One thing that has helped a lot is some advice a therapist once gave me:

Treat yourself as you would a close friend or loved one, with kindness.

In a way, this is similar to the “Golden Rule” except it’s pointed inward. Most people wouldn’t treat someone they care for with malice when they see them hurting, or to mentally, emotionally, or physically abuse them when they’re already in pain. Yet all the time I see people who have mental health issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc. treat themselves horribly and without compassion or kindness. I am absolutely guilty of this, and it takes everything in me some days to realize that it’s my own mental illness talking and not the truth. I’m not always successful, but it has gotten easier over time.

As Summer (the one and only person who ever made me feel I could truly be loved for who I was) used to tell me:

There’s always hope.

So please… If you struggle with self-worth issues or mental health issues or simply put yourself down about things like I do, treat yourself as you would somebody you care deeply for…

With kindness.