3

I will still be here long after he is grown old and died.

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(Stayed up all night) 6 am, Monday, 15MAR2010

　
Watched a show called the Patty Duke Show, which is an old, black and white sitcom ..
When I was a kid, and first started thinking with the other side of my brain -- the side that noticed I was wearing diapers, and not only still a kid, but still a very small kid -- would watch shows like this about families and see my life through that lens, a lens that had no choice but to find the horrors of the Johnston House impossible to make sense of.

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(stayed up all night) early Tuesday morning.
　
Since I’m not sleeping the days all run together. The only reason I know there’s a such thing as time is because of what’s on the TV.
When I’m high it makes my head feel like there’s a ringing going on, like my ears are ringing but it’s my head. The dull noise makes my head feel physical. It pulls me more grounded.
(I fall asleep on the couch and sleep till afternoon)
I’m in the future because I’m a soul, because shifting and soul-living is the future of this world -- because the world is going to die.
I’m off the four pills a day. I’m down to none. I keep them in the house, just in case, cause I’m not going back, I’m never going back to not Real. I’m always going to remember, and if I don’t I’ve written it down, just in case.
I can see everything through the boy’s eyes, and in order to sustain it, I stay Brave.
It’s like I have ended up with two life stories: one numb, analytical, articulately true, the other Knowing, wordless, Real.
Funny, the reason I wasn’t Him for awhile was because of my horrific life. It’s because of my horrific life that my being Him was ensured -- (if only my psyche can survive the whole thing, of course).
I feel like Trevor is farther away from me, like all this writing has pulled me in some unReal direction.
Like now that I can remember us as boys I’ve ruined the image I’ve always had of him as a young man showing me around the after life ..
Even as I write this, though, I can feel his touch.

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Woke from a dream where I watch a you tube video of a scene from a movie, and the guy in the dream kind of steps out of it, and in the dream I discover the truth of you tube videos.
Because he’s a kind of hologram I start having sex with him, but then it becomes this weird memory thing where I’m more holding him down than it is consensual.
The guy -- some blonde guy, like from a soap opera -- starts explaining something to me, something important.
I know, even in the dream, that I’ve never raped any body, I even stopped in the dream when the blonde guy pulled away, but by then the dream becomes convoluted and shifts.
The blonde guy is gone, now an older man has broken into the apartment, and I end up killing him, but because I feel confused about the almost-sex and maybe rape(?) I had with the blonde guy I get this really guilty feeling, treating what I’ve done as murder.
I go to the cops, and am basically s-cking up the whole time, being overly gracious, overly apologetic, just trying to get through it, trying to get away with it without anyone making me feel guilty.

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Woke from a dream where we come back from Iraq to a Fort state-side that is set up like a resort.
There is shanty town along side a lake where the soldiers all go to have sex. They stand in long lines outside each make-shift tent. But I don’t, because I’m not yet Real enough for sex, and find it all abhorrous. So I go on a boat ride.
Eric is there, but he’s playing the role of House, with House’s story and ways. I think, was I once in love with my best friend, am I supposed to be in love with Eric? (Eric was my best friend when I was a teenager.)
Am I supposed to have sex with Eric? But I couldn’t bring myself to do that either. Finally I go inside the resort/fort’s admin facility, to the front desk.
I tell the woman I need counseling services. I allow her to think that I need the counseling because of the war, but in my mind I’m terrified that I’ll never be Real enough to be intimate, and will have failed the boy.
As usual in the army, she isn’t really helpful, she just shows me how to help myself. I’m to look though this book of phone numbers, but I can’t make sense of it, and can’t find anything about counseling, and it starts to freak me out, the words and numbers not making any sense, and I wake up.

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(woke out in the hammock during sunset)
　
I stepped out to the pond by the house. I sat and watched the geese and sunset, listened to the loud sounds of frogs and crickets and birds. I watched the ripples in the water and cleared my head of words.
I remembered a small tub of water in first grade. I allowed the rest of the memory. The empty 2-liter soda bottle boat with a balloon attached to it. When the balloon exhaled the boat shot across the tub.
The teacher was trying to teach us science.

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(late night/early morning 18/19MAR2010)
　
When I was a kid, I spent so much trouble trying to pretend to be a kid; as a teenager I worried pretending to be a teenager; then I was an adult anxiously pretending to be an adult.
All along I was that boy, playing under the blanket with Tre. I had to pretend so they wouldn’t kill me, or rape me anymore.

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It’s the touch. It takes me back to Real, just like that, the memories just as fresh as when the Shifting was at its most vivid, but this time the Shifting is seamless, instead of harsh and sharp with each shift.
When this person who loves me touches me, when his or her skin, fingertips or lips are against my skin, I become horrific, taking horrific memories in stride, so that they will pass and I can experience the present intimacy.
The thing about when this person who loves me is around, is that I have to allow them to see me. I always have hid, never allowing my true posture, my true voice, my true manner. There was a reason for that. I didn’t want anyone to fall in love with me, I didn’t want to be touched, I didn’t want to Remember, I didn’t want to be Horrific.
Lately that last paragraph has been a bad habit I reckon with, the logistics of breaking it annoying. I can allow them to see my story even though I have said no words. I allow it by my movements, my manner, my ways, the Real me shows through.
I’m afraid to show up all the way even when I’m alone. If I show up all the way I can allow it to the point where I can feel Tre.

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