One Year

One year. It's been one year.

One year since I started ADHD meds.
One year since Benjamin and I started dating.
One year since the first weekend I spent in a small 3-bedroom house in Kyle, Texas.
One year since my apartment was broken into.
One year since I met Jakal.

It's been one hell of a year.

I am a being made of stories and milestones. I will take almost any moment and turn it into something significant. I spend a lot of time considering my life Before something and After something. I separate my life into little pieces trying to understand it better by examining it closely. Trying to understand myself better.

I think part of the motivation of this impulse is my complicated relationship with time (thanks, ADHD. Thanks, trauma.) I struggle to see the past in the right light, I struggle to believe in the future in any solid way. So I drop milestones like breadcrumbs, hoping that if I stand here, looking back over all my little pieces, that I might start to understand something. I might know where I came from, how I got here, and where to go next.

One year since I started ADHD meds. I seem to be in the lucky minority that started on the right med and stuck with it. I've increased my dosage once in the past year. There might be better options that work better with my brain, and I might explore them at some point. For now, though, these work. I know that my life has been different on medication. Most days, sitting still is a lot easier. Reading is enjoyable again. I can tell a story without getting totally lost in the weeds, although Ben and a few other people can confirm a tendency to wander. My driving is a little less reckless. I don't feel quite the same need to jump at every opportunity to get a hit of dopamine. I have some struggles with appetite, as most stimulants suppress that. I've lost about 30 pounds in the past year, and gained about 7 of it back when I started on my new antidepressant. Ups, downs, but undeniably different.

One year since Ben and I started dating. By this time last year we had been talking for 6 months already. That's how long it took me to get up the courage to ask him if dating was something we were already doing. He said yes and that he'd been thinking about it as well. I can pretty much guarantee you that he hadn't brought it up because it just hadn't occurred to him to do so. Milestones don't mean quite the same thing to him as they do to me. But it's been a year. A year of learning each other and learning ourselves together. A year of me slowly getting better at communication, slowly getting better at trust, and slowly getting better at hope. A year of Ben learning how to express love so I feel it, learning to ask me again when I say I'm okay, learning that dating a hyperactive puppy of a person is an absolute blessing even when it's kind of exhausting. A year of "I talked to Ben, and I feel better now." A year of patience for ourselves and each other. A year of stretching ourselves to accommodate the needs and desires of another person. A year of learning where we are not capable of or willing to stretch. A year of me learning to stand up for myself, to hold my needs up and say "these are important." I'm not there yet, but I'm a year closer than I was.

One year since the first time I stayed at the Kyle House. These are my people. I didn't know it a year ago, but this is my family. We are still figuring each other out, but they've been stuck with me since this weekend last year. I walked into that house, and part of my heart never left it.  I couldn't have imagined this path of my life this time last year. I had already started thinking about what it might be like to live in Austin, to move closer to my people, to get a little space from home. I didn't have any clue I would be moving in with my people, however. I didn't know the home I was making, but I've spent the year making it all the same. Come September, I'll be going home.

One year since my apartment got broken into. I don't have a whole lot to say about that. It's just... been a year, hasn't it?

One year since I met Jakal. This one is off by about two weeks because I've been saving some bits and pieces for this anniversary blog. A year ago I met someone who could have disappeared into the background noise of my past. Could have just... been a blip, a little light, a snapshot of a perfect weird night. But I kept this one. Held on real tight, and here were are, a year later. Not a lot has changed between us, except that we know each other better. We're partners now, and while I can tell you the day we said it, I don't have a clue when it started. I know that a year ago I said "hey universe, this one is mine, we'll figure out the details later." That's still where we are. He have right now, we have trust that the other person makes time when they can, trust that the other person has our best interests at heart, and trust that we're going to take this one day at a time and just see what happens. I have a person who loves me and who encourages my honesty and openness and feeling at every opportunity. A year of that kind of solid, steady presence, even when it's far away, can work wonders. It has worked wonders in my life.

The past year has been hard as hell. If you're reading this blog you probably know most of it, and if you don't, there's plenty you can learn here. I had to grow up big time, and it feels like that isn't going to stop any time soon. But it has been a year of love and light and flourishing, too. May the road ahead always be smoother than the road behind, or may you be capable of handling the rough patches.

Do the Work

Y’all, I have a friend whose preferred pronouns are none. Use no pronouns.

If anybody thought that being queer and genderfluid and aware made any of this easier, please take note. Our language wasn’t built to take care of people, our social conventions about repeating someone’s name a lot (ie- don’t) don’t leave a lot of room to take care of people. It isn’t *easy* to rewrite the way you speak in your head, I know that. (I’ve heard it from so many of my friends and family, too.)

It’s still worth it tho. It still matters to me to take care of this person and to treat my friend with respect. My mental gymnastics are my problem, not my friend’s.

Don’t get complacent because you think you know everything already. Be ready to let your paradigm shift again and again because we are changing the world to take care of each other. Do the work.

Romantic Love

Romantic love is difficult to qualify or quantify or make any sense of. People talk about it all the time, there are songs and books and poems that all try to make sense of it. Defining it is tricky, however, and it gets more so when you start to look outside of heteronormativity, monogamy, and the relationship escalator.

I can tell you that romantic love, for me, is different from friend love, family love, puppy love... It feels like warm honey in the sun, golden and liquid. It feels like tiny fireworks going off in my brain. It is tied to a few people in my life, and it usually starts with a heavy dose of apprehension because it's something I feel all the way, every single time.

My concept of romantic love is complicated by my friend Spencer. Spencer is someone I have been friends with since April of 2012, and when we first started talking I fell head over heels for them within weeks. I expressed my interest and affection, I was gently rebuffed, and I was a broken little heap for a couple days. I revived. I recovered. I didn't lose that spark. Spencer and I lived in the same dorm freshman year of college, and I went to see them whenever I could. I listened to stories about their life and classes, I sat on their floor while they did homework, I adjusted every time they changed their name or pronouns, and listened every time they expressed their identity and orientation differently.

I expected nothing. After I asked the first time, I never again told them I wanted to date. I didn't want to date. I wanted them to be happy, to be part of my life, to thrive in their environment and relationships. I wanted to support that in any way that I could. I've spent a few years now watching Spencer from afar as they do all of these things, and as they become the person they've always wanted to become. And I still feel that spark, that liquid gold, that certainty of affection. This person will always be my person.

My love for my friend Whitney is a different kind of love. It's bright and happy and sometimes exasperated and protective. It's standing up for her when she can't stand up for herself, and it's her reminding me that my feelings are important even when I want to prioritize other people. We have steel cables connecting us across the miles and time. This person will always be my person.

Ben and Jakal are my people, too. My partners. Honey in the sun, fireworks in the brain, butterflies in the stomach affection and joy and anticipation. The building of something new and beautiful. Still learning each other, still reaching out at random times just to feel the warmth and reality of each other. Reassurance and emotional support and jokes and sharing. Building lives that entwine and entangle and converge. These are different, and they do not come with the certainty of forever, but they come with the certainty of "right now, forever." One of my favorite lines of poetry that I've ever encountered is from "How It Ends" by Andrea Gibson.

"But whatever

Whenever
However this ends,
I want you to know, that right now,
I love you forever."

Changing The World

Fostering radical self-love, self-care, acceptance and mutual support in my immediate social and familial circles is how I’m changing the world.

We have to take care of each other, especially right now. There’s a lot of darkness in the world, and there are a lot of people that want you to feel sad and downtrodden and helpless. Maybe I can’t stop those people, but I can uplift my own one day at a time.

Love Me

Some days, it makes me sad how consistently I am surprised that people love me and want me around. I am surprised when people show that I am welcome in their lives and families. I don't know when this happened. I don't know what made me doubt that people could and do like and love me. Some days, I'm sad.

But I also recognize that this means that I have a chance to appreciate every moment that proves me wrong. I deeply appreciate moments of welcome and casual intimacy. I may need more reassurance, and I may hold myself back at times because of doubt, but in the moment the words are spoken or the action taken, I believe. I believe and I am joyful.

So to everyone who has worked to take that doubt away, to everyone who has welcomed me into their lives, their families, their homes, their hearts- thank you. Thank you for the reassurance. Thank you for every outstretched hand and shared meal. Sometimes I can't express what it means to me.