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.

Signs of Stability

This month, I am on track to finish a bottle of shampoo for the first time since I started buying my own shampoo. I have finished an entire pen for the first time. I just finished a stick of deodorant. I'm about to finish my second tube of toothpaste ever.

These are little things. They are things that I might not admit to every person that knows me (except, well, here I am.) They are little things that are very big to me. These are the little hallmarks of emotional, physical, and mental stability that I haven't had in a long time. If I ever had them. I'm showering on a regular basis, I only own two bottles of shampoo right now, and I'm going to use this one all up before I buy a new one. The same is true of the deodorant. I kept track of one single pen for multiple months, and journaled at least a little bit almost every day. I'm brushing my teeth almost every day, a habit I only started in October of last year.

I am maintaining habits, I am staying focused, I am able to take care of myself and keep track of my belongings. I haven't lost half of everything I own since last August! Stability! It isn't perfect, my stability isn't complete, but damn. It's nice to settle into my own life a little bit.

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."

Thankful

Thanksgiving 2017

Okay so I made my grouchy status already, here’s the sappy one.

Today is a day to be thankful, to look at your life and be grateful for what you have. This has been a hard year for gratitude, I’m gonna be honest. But I will look at my life over the past year and extend grace to it and to myself.

I am grateful for my family. We are safe and mostly happy and mostly healthy, and that’s what counts.

I am grateful for my friends. I’ve hit some incredibly rough patches this year, and every single time my friends have stepped up to help me out. Y’all have shown me what it’s like to have a support system. Even on my hardest day what I felt most was love.

I am grateful for mental health treatment. I started seeing a psychiatrist in April, and it has changed my life. I’m on medication for bipolar disorder, something I’ve been sure I had for a couple years now. I’m also on medication for ADHD, which I never would have imagined. These things, along with therapy, have contributed to this being my most emotionally stable year in recent memory.

I am grateful for my amazing partners. Benjamin Shelton and Charlie Rossander have improved this year beyond measure, showing me love and kindness and patience and support and joy. They are both ridiculous people who remind me regularly to take care of myself and give me the opportunity to help take care of them. Between the two of them, there is nothing I have to hold alone, and nothing I feel incapable of. Thank you.

I am grateful for the sun and the clouds and the ocean and the trees and everything that reminds me to see beauty anywhere it exists.

I am grateful for my awe and my wonder and my joyous child’s heart.

Say thank you. Look at your life and say thank you.