7

Tolle talks about how nature is what sets you free from your mind, it’s what brings you back to your true, holy state of Natural. What he’s really saying is that sex sets you free.
Like it’s what brings you back to that non-conceptual thinking, purity, wordless wisdom -- brings me back to Him.
I notice good looking women have that power over me, a smile, a look, like the one in the chow hall yesterday, she took a good look at me, and He was back, the mental noise gone.
R__ wanted me to play. He wanted me to compete with him for my own mother and sisters. It’s what Mom and my sisters wanted, too. A sick, incestuous game, for sick people, but as an adult I still hold back from playing that game.
According to Cal, in order to be a man you have to be The Man, and I felt the truth in that, and how I had felt that in the House.
Nature and Nurture collided in that place, each destroying the other’s credibility.

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When I’m the boy -- just older now -- I can feel the weight of the emotions; it’s all there, without any story, or need for any story to validate them.
Why is the boy the one who keeps me in check as far as what’s Real and what’s not Real? May because he’s my Soul. So many years have been wasted trying to distance myself from him, and the things he knew, and the things he remembered.
What’s surprising is how easy it is. No problems this time. According to what I have known of the world it shouldn’t be.
I remember the those first six months of Sweet, now indefinite. It was when I was first out of the House, eighteen years old and not a memory in my head, not to mention a thought.
What it was like to be free, what it was like to sit down, to wake up and choose what to do with the day. It only lasted six months, because the Roaring came and made it all fall apart. The Sweet didn’t work because of all the pain I refused, couldn’t deal with, the pain of being Him. The pain the boy knew.
I process things differently now that the boy is me, and I am him, and the House is right there, and artillery, and all the days of my life, so right there it’s like the future is right there, like it’s all the same, like there’s no such thing as change.
Usually I would feel excited about the recent events, and almost do, but the boy being so close, I feel I’m Him, and I feel I deserve good friendships, and I feel like this is normalcy.
I notice things don’t get to me. Once normalized, my life seems to have normalized, I don’t feel my moods or emotions leaving the middle realm much.
Another change is how In the House I did what Precious did: sometimes daydreamed about one day being the American ideal: a Hollywood celebrity. Now, feeling the boy I am, I don’t want those things. When I’m numb, unReal, not-Him, I do catch myself wanting such superficial, materialistic things, when I’m Him, they never cross my mind.
Thing is, the person that’s in my head -- isn’t him. It’s still a shock, that statement, and it reverberates through out my Real life.
Like how I still don’t like movies or books, even though they used to be all I had. I tried to watch Valley of Elah but got disinterested, not because it wasn’t good, but because it didn’t matter to me.
When I start getting disinterested with things that used to be interesting to me, I feel a little hopeless about how enjoyable my future is going to be, because I can‘t see it, or imagine it, I‘ve never known a Real life. More is changing than I expected.

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For days I’ve had a swarm of tangents -- of things I already know, I’ve already written -- swirling around my head. Things are still not easy, I still have to remind myself to not be numb, which to me means I’m still at risk for it all to fall apart.
I had to go in and be checked by the medics again. He said, _You have very healthy blood pressure. Mine is too low, so they say I‘m hypo-something, you’re just above that._
For years medical personnel have commented on how high my blood pressure is. I wondered what was going on and that maybe it was a good sign.
I got back to our tent and I noticed the calendar on the wall, I realized how close I was to the end. I hadn’t allowed myself to notice the exact number of days before.
I read something in Middlesex, a book I had felt taken by because of the way the main character experiences his gender, like it was something new, like he had once been on the outside looking in.
The words the narrator used was: _that‘s when I realized a shocking thing. I couldn‘t become a man without becoming The Man. Even if I didn‘t want to._
All being the alpha male requires is to be the more confident one, it’s not something faked, but it is something chosen. I have a hard time with that, confidence that is forced, it makes me feel like a small-pen-ised guy with a flashy sports car.
The chick-fe-la girl has been on my mind. It’s like all I’m waiting for is the chick-fe-la girl to come back and make me Real again. Aren’t I supposed to be Real with or without her? It’s like I’m waiting to get out of this platonic mode that feels numbing, stifling, unReal.
I remember the thought crossing my mind. It seemed okay, even a good idea at the time, letting go of the boy for awhile, where all the feelings were anyway, and getting as close to women as could be possible at that time: I went to the library and got a book intended for women on how to decorate. I would watch Oprah, for no other reason than that it was full of women, about women, for women. It wasn’t a decision, though, it just crossed my mind, it became an impulse, when I was fresh out of the House.
I grew up in something so close to bondage I have to think about the word for a long time to decide whether to use it or not. I grew up thinking there’s more to the experience of life than my own. It caused me to not pay attention to my own experience. It led to my consistently putting my own experience down.
While K__ makes me want to smoke pot and back pack the world for five months straight, W__ makes me want to go back to work, cash in the GI Bill, and meet a girl and settle down.
I’ve worked all my life just to get to the point where I could choose between the two. I thought that it would be my children who would choose, because my life would be the one spent building it all for the next generation. I would always live a life that was forced on me, that was less than what I deserved, where all I could do for the future was to endure its harsh costs and save the hard earned money.

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