3

Mel___, my supervisor at the time, a soulful brown skinned man who looked in his thirties, but was really in his fifties.
I was at his house one morning, him drinking because his woman had left him. He started talking about all I had going for me.
I was eighteen and my life was a wreck. All I did was work, and had done so for many years to the point I felt more beast than human.
I disagreed with him. _Look at me, Mel__, are you kidding me?_ I said. _I got nothing going for me._
He was my unofficial supervisor at one of my jobs. We did very blue collar work. He had taught me how to drive a fork lift. And a stick. He tried to call me son once.
_You’re embarrassing yourself, talking like that,_ he said, rubbing his brown hands over his face and eyes. He seemed angry with me.
At the time I found him incredulous.

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I would go on walks and runs with my dog. I was a boy and adolescent and my childhood could be put together chronologically by what dog I had at the time. It was the rural South so I used old dirt paths thru woods and fields.
Like a boy would, I wasn’t interested in pain, and naturally made myself happy. I didn’t know that that meant I had disconnected from the world.
There wasn’t anything wrong with me back then, or ever. Hard to believe because as I grew up I became so out of control and volatile.

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So it all fell within normalcy. Even the Bad stuff. All along, I was normal.
I understand the extraordinary silence concerning male sexual abuse. K___ and Mace__ make conversation and talk with their close friends by saying exactly what’s on their mind. If I did that, I’d come across as a basket case.
One day, what’s on my mind will be just as normal as the life I was intended, and I’ll be able to effortlessly live out loud.
Since it will fall within normalcy, it means I will be able to talk about it. I won’t have to build a close close friendship before confessing the truth.
I can be like Rod___; I can say, _I come from extreme child abuse. I have had a volatile and tumultuous life._ And that would be normal. I could talk as effortlessly as K__ and Mace__ and Rod___.
It’s like there are two sides of me, The one who craves normalcy and the one doesn’t. Him, and the boy. Because back then everyone seemed to insist that the House was normal.
I remember when I was maybe thirteen, Mom was driving and we were stopped at a red light at some railroad tracks in the middle of shopping district. It was summer, and everything was green or blooming. I saw a car with some teenagers, a boy and a girl.
You know that’s going to happen to you, I thought to myself, No, cause then my life would be too Real.

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Lately I’ve been having these sex dreams. It’s like all that’s on my mind is breasts. I can sense Mom behind those thoughts somewhere, like some subtle connection.
There’s something grounding about the dreams, something that would’ve been just as grounding if I had had a real Mom, one who at least wasn’t so traumatizing and enraged.
I was supposed to not have had issues with my Mom. I was supposed to not have had issues with sex. I would’ve felt grounding and normal then. I imagine A__ and H__ have this connection with R___. I imagine they at first balked at the idea of becoming a woman when Mom was their most prevalent example.
The low self esteem seems gone when I’m grounded. Lately seems like I told myself those negative thoughts to slow my drive down and keep me away from women and sex.
It was a deeper, almost subconscious version of the Dark game I played with A__ and H___: The worst thing that could’ve happened when I was a boy was for Mom to like me, to feel proud of me, to approve me.
It was so deep that it felt evolutionary, like for me to be normal meant that Mom and R__ were evolutionarily successful, despite all the Abuse they inflicted on me.
I think about if I had a son with a bad woman, the worst of women, Satan herself. If I would punish her by making sure the child didn’t live a successful life. Of course I wouldn’t. I wonder why the opposite urge could be found when it was in reference to me.

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Eric’s house was a sanctuary when I was a teenager. We were friends. He also had problems at home, only they weren’t extreme. We never talked like that. We were so busy trying to be normal. I noticed years ago that most of my close friends since then have simply been another version of Eric.
He went into the marines as soon as he was old enough. When I knew him all he talked about was the military and weapons and campaigns. His father made fun of him for it, acted like it was a sign of his weakness that he was so on the outside looking in as far as that stuff.
I think about if he met me now, if we were to run into each other. What he would think of me ten years older, with still mostly C’s and rarely A’s.
If he tried to call me on it I’d tell him: Neither Jesus or Satan could’ve done better.

__________

　
My mind has been quiet lately, and I wonder how long it will last. I notice that everything triggers a memory, even when I’m not paying attention; everything is familiar, connected.
Only when a memory triggers it does the mind fill up. Seems like when my mind is quiet, I become more aware of the connection, the normalcy. At certain moments I am aware of a memory, the connection, here, there, as it slides through my mind almost unnoticed.
Lately I’ve been making people laugh more, which is always a surprise. It’s even to the point of play fighting.
I remember to listen to my own heart beat, reminding myself the rest has been written down already. I remember the Hims I’ve met along the way and their example.
I remember how K__ was already gone on leave when I came back from the hospital. I haven’t seen him in weeks. For some reason he’s my biggest trigger.
It makes the progress seem fleeting. I have a feeling as soon as he’s back it will start up again.

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It popped into my head recently that Angelica might be detrimental. The tiniest details make me feel I need to be careful because she might be one of those people I knew back then, who twisted Christianity in order to emasculate men, castrate them, watering down their definition. Online, incidentally, she corrected me, somehow.
That’s how it popped into my head with K___. It was like my mind was subconsciously keeping a mental list of everything that he had in common with the people back then.
Careful, it said, he comes from a normal home, he might not can see you, he might twist everything. Months later, the list longer, it said, be very careful, he got past the sixth grade, got all the way to a bachelor’s, he might think he’s more evolved than you. Months later, the list longer, it said, be very, very careful, he’s got other friends now, he might decide he’s better than you.
That’s how I experience it. It just pops into my head, innocent, seemingly abstract, seemingly valuable. It never seems like distrust at first. It only comes across that way in the end, after I’ve made myself feel ridiculous.
I thought at some point the distrust would give way to trust. I guess not. It’s more like I have to simply recognize the distrust behind the perception, then disbelieve it, without any strong feeling of trust to take its place. A giant leap.
It hurts, because I know that my distrust for others reflects how much I distrust myself. It starts with my distrust for myself. It seems impossible to live without that trust, to live without being able to trust your own mind, your own perception.
I’m only Him when I trust I’m Him.

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