Follows The Sun

It seems it is never as simple as just making the right changes in your life and then being happy forever.

My face is leaking. I keep. Crying.

I’ve been crying for a week. I’ve been crying for a year. I am so. sick. of crying.

And worse than simply crying is knowing that everybody can see on your face that the evening has not gone the way you’d hoped. Worse than simply crying is choosing between staying to let them see you sad, or walking away from them to let them worry. Perhaps chase you. But none of them are the person who can hold you till you’re ok (indeed, there probably is no such person) and you do. not. want. to. talk. Worse than just crying is crying when people can see you, when you’re chopping the tomatoes, when you change the song three times in a row hoping it will help, but the happy songs just make you cry a little more.

I never worry about being lonely when there’s nobody around me. I read or I watch seasons’ worth of escapist shows or I write or I talk to distant people on the Internet, and if I cry – so what? I cry.

But building closer relationships with friends means spending more time with them means that they’re there, sometimes, when the crying comes on. And I just want to go away.

Oh, what a stupid evening. What a stupid, miserable, mess of a night. What an ill-thought out plan, and a girl standing on a bridge looking out over the water and trying not to let the anger and the sadness and the bitterness through. It won’t help anything. It won’t improve anything, and nobody has meant to do anything to hurt me. Even where there might be some thoughtlessness, there’s no maliciousness, and I’m too tired of it all to set people to rights.

I hurt, and I am tired of explanations. I am tired of communication. I am tired of figuring things out and worrying about other people, and I am shit at believing and remembering that they’re worrying about me. And even if they are, it’s just one more thing to bear in mind, and I’m through with it. I just want to be on my own. I don’t want there to be anybody who can let me down. I don’t want to let anyone down.

But wanting to be on my own, needing to be on my own, doesn’t mean that I can’t be lonely. It’s so easy to be lonely, in a crowd.

And I am sick to death of mood swings. I had trusted the happiness, but the deep dips of sadness are getting more frequent. I am afraid of not trusting my happiness. People catch me the morning after a bad night and ask me how I am, and I’m so good! I’m great! What are they even fretting about?! but then night rolls around, or the wrong song in the car in the afternoon, and it all comes pouring back, and I can’t tell what’s inside me.

But at least it’s my problem. Sure, sometimes there are other people around, and that can’t be avoided, but nobody is going crazy over me but me. And I can go crazy over myself, and rearrange the pieces as many times as I need till I’m ok again. And nobody can let me down. And nobody can fail to be there for me when I need it, or tell me that supporting me is just not something they can do. If I just take care of myself, I’ll be fine. No one can break me or hurt me or bruise me, and sooner or later, please, this sadness will all have poured out.

And maybe I’ll just stay alone then, too. And let nobody in to do me good or do me harm. And give myself no chance to sublimate my needs to someone else’s. And then, ok. Maybe then. Maybe. I’ll be fine, y’know? Just fine, and stable, and as happy as I know I can be (I know it. I have so much JOY in me; if only the world stopped getting in the way of it).

And nobody could hurt me, not ever again.

Being alone isn’t always fun, and I am not saying that I want to do it forever. But it is so much safer, so infinitely much safer, than the pain that other people can bring.

I’m alive and well. Very alive, in fact, and very well.

More changes came and swept me up, but the object now is to find a base level full of joy. Friends have come to live near me, family has taken a more central role in my life. I found work that seems impossibly marvelous, tending a flock of people too brilliant to always remember to tend to themselves.

I cook, I keep my home tidy, I strengthen my threshold with love.

After three years of looking, I finally bought the right pair of brown leather knee high boots. After 20 years of not being comfortable doing so, I wear them with skirts and dresses, and smile when they swish around my knees.

I water my plants. I feed those I love. I wander up and down the coast. I stay up late talking. I listen to jazz.

So the pieces are still falling into place, of course. And will keep falling, like snow, in three dimensions. But not writing here was a conspicuous lack, so I’m back, and I’m happy. I set this blog up a little more than a year ago, determined to be independent, to pay for my own hosting, to purchase my own domain. I was also determined to be pseudonymous, and keep this place completely unconnected from my legal identity.

Still determined to be independent. Even more so. For the first time in a long time I’m looking out for myself first and foremost, day in and day out, in each moment and, I hope, in all the years to come. I’m building my life with my own patterns, so someday, perhaps, if someone comes along that I want to fit into those patterns, I’ll know where the lines are, what I can give and what I cannot.

As far as being pseudonymous though; screw it. I want to be me, happily and completely, under whatever name I choose, with no worries and no doubts.

And one more thing; before I end this little note.

I am full of gratitude. So full it stops me in my tracks, walking home from the bakery, to stand and think how incredibly much I gained over the past year and more. To everyone who has come into my life, who has spoken to me and gotten to know me, and to everyone who was there all the years, and to those in between; I’m grateful. To everyone I’ve fought with and loved and learned from. To everyone I’ve missed and mourned. To everyone I’ve laughed with. To everyone who knew me as a child and a teen, but met me fresh and let go of expectations while I figure my (all grown up!) self out, I am so grateful.

This is just to say, thank you.

Once upon a time I was a stubborn, lonely, smart, confused and confusing girl of 12.  I was in Middle School, and I didn’t like it. The people who had been my friends had graduated and gone to high school, I alternately pitied and envied the reigning cliques of popular boys and girls, I wrote prose/poems at the rate of one or two a day, and I thought myself a diamond in the rough.

It was in this year that I first met another girl, smart, lonely, confused – she did a considerably better job of meshing with the reigning cliques than I did, but I think that she sat mostly on the outside as well.

We weren’t best friends, but we were friends. We weren’t always together, but we sometimes were.

We weren’t always together in high school. We started at the same school, joined the theater club at the same time, but I went to New York for a while, and then to a smaller, weirder, more progressive school. She followed, but kept ties to the theater club. We ran in some of the same circles, but not all.

But we grew together. We stuck together. And when clashes between other friends threatened to pull us apart, we found ourselves unwilling. We’d known each other longer, by then. We already marveled at how long.

We went to college far from eachother, and then moved to separate places. She called me up in tears. I called her up in tears. Our friendship was never based in being with each other all the time, in seeing each other every day or telling each other everything. I don’t know the names of all her friends. I don’t know everything she does.

She changed. Straightened her hair then stopped straightening it. Her body changed as she grew up, more than mine did. She got a tattoo, she became a vegetarian, she fell in love with a girl. I was surprised, impressed, overjoyed.

I am surprised, impressed, overjoyed.

I changed – she could tell you how better than I could, probably. Subtle things inside of me. I still have the same hairstyle, still wear the same clothes, same body type – but I began to choose words and labels more carefully (and then stopped labeling myself at all), I cordoned off the things that hurt me and open myself fully to the things that brought me joy. My stubbornness came to the forefront, and I refused any path offered and walked into the wilderness alone.

She watched me, supported me, reminded me to love myself.

She supports me, and reminds me to love myself.

What I am trying to say is that I write about food and I write about May and I write about Z and I write about sex, and gender, and life, and sadness and joy.

These things make up my day-to-day existence. This girl makes up the fabric of my life. She is a longer story than that. She is in the background all the time. I think about her every day. I think about all the things that she is. I think maybe my life is destined to end with two old ladies in a house somewhere, with cats and plants and potato salad, with our hair growing white and our smiles unshakable, having fought all our battles, all our lives, away form each other, having loved and supported each other from a distance for so long, and having finally come together, safe from the world and it’s wreckage, joyous and peaceful and good.

That is decades in the future, but I want to say, that I have been her friend for 10 years now, and she has been mine. And our friendship is not like other friendships in our lives. It is unshakable. It is irreplaceable. It is not as simple as that. Maybe she’s the love of my life. Certainly I know the idea of her being angry with me or disappointed in me is scarier than the thought of similarly letting down any romantic partner I’ve ever had. You know, they come and go. She came so long ago, she’s always been there. I don’t know what would happen if she ever, ever went.

I don’t have the words for this. I don’t know how to say, that when we announced ourselves as married on a social networking site, that may not have been strictly true, but really wasn’t a joke. We had no ceremony, we just fell into being bonded to each other more closely than to anybody else, with all our distance and all our time apart. Nobody can come between us. Nobody should try. Nobody should say a word against her in my presence. Where she is concerned, I have no sense of humor. Only fiercely loyal, protective love.

She sent me a love letter. I know she’s worked on it, on and off, for months. She started in a sad time, and I think she might be on the brink of a happy time, and I’m so glad. She wrote me a love letter, pasted pictures out of magazines and snippets and quotes that made her think of me and she sent it here, full of grace. And she demurs now and says she was in a weird place when she wrote it, like it’s no big thing or maybe over the top. As if it could be.

I think she may be the first person I ever trusted not to leave me.

I keep glancing over, now, at her love letter to me, and my eyes keep prickling like maybe I’m going to cry.

She wrote me a love letter, and I wrote her this.

I hope you like it. I hope you know how much I love you. I hope you know I’ll never stop and I’ll never forget and no matter how far away I am, I’m not going anywhere. I hope you know.

You should know: I love soup.

I do! My terrible addiction to packaged ramen noodles is, at base, just a particularly quick-fix for my underlying adoration of soup. I like thick soups like lentil and thin soups like the stunning rich beef broth with tiny pieces of vegetables and miniature bow-tie noodles floating in it that I once ate in Hungary. I like hot soups like chicken noodle and cold soups like vichyssoise and tomato consomme (oh, my lord, tomato consomme…) I like meaty soups and vegetarian soups and vegan soups. I love soup.

Maybe it’s because I’m lazy , and like my meals to be spoon-scoopable. But I don’t think so. There is something good about soup. Hot soup in winter is soul-warming and comforting and easy, requiring little thought or fuss. Cool soup in summer is more refreshing than any salad could ever hope to be.

However, like the sainted Laurie Colwin, from who’s books “Home Cooking” and “More Home Cooking” I learned so much of my mode and thinking about cooking, I do not like sweet ‘desert soups’. Not that they’re bad tasting, necessarily, or have an unpleasing texture – I just think that they are properly sauces, and should have some lovely poached fruit sitting in the middle of them, or be drizzled over ice-cream. If sauce is good, I like a lot of sauce. I have no problem with half a grilled peach sitting in an entire bowl of blueberry sauce. Quantity of liquid does not a soup make. Sweet soups are not of the true soupy-spirit.

What may be more surprising than my love hot-soup-in-winter or cold-soup-in-summer, is the fact that I also love hot-soup-in-summer. My Father told me long ago, and I believed him (probably because I was eating ramen at the time and was not about to stop) that eating hot foods in the summer actually helps cool you down. And also? Soup is delicious. I want it all year round.

It’s quarter-of-10 in the evening and has only just cooled down to 70 degrees, with lightning in the distance and a storm rolling in, and I am eating soup.  It took about as long as ramen noodles, perhaps a little longer, and it is infinitely more delicious (or perhaps I am simply growing up?). This soup too I owe to the amazing Ms. Colwin, and because it is so good, I shall share it with you.

Laurie Colwin’s Last-Minute Soup

Hardware:

• Small saucepan
• Small knife
• Small cutting board
• Small bowl (for mixing egg)*
• Fork
• Spoon
• Bowl to eat it from

Software:

• 1-2 cups chicken broth or stock (home-made if you have it)**
• A few stalks of asparagus
• Some little pasta (pastina stars or orzo … that size)***
• 1 Egg
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon (or Lime)
• Black Pepper

1. Bring stock to simmer in small saucepan. While it heats, cut your asparagus into little rounds, perhaps  quarter of an inch long. Leave about an inch and a quarter at the tips. Break the egg into the little bowl and beat it with the fork. Cut the lemon in half.
2. When the soup is simmering, add the asparagus and pasta.
3. When the pasta is soft, stir in the beaten egg (quickly, so it forms little strands instead of big lumps), squeeze in the lemon juice (careful of the seeds!) and grind in some pepper. If it’s too sour, you can add a little salt at this point, but probably it will be delicious.

That’s it. Quick and easy, filling and delicious, with vegetable and protein all in one easy, spoonable meal.

Isn’t soup grand?

* What can I say? It’s a small soup. Soup for one. Double this if you want soup for two.

** This is not a vegetarian soup, but if you switch it out for veggie broth or miso (could be interesting) it could be. With the omission of the egg, it becomes vegan – but also less nutritious.

*** Go a bit easy on these unless you like a sort of slurry – they expand a lot!

All week you and I have wandered
In and out of misery
Through quarrels
And through ecstasy, through joy
Frustratingly familiar
This variance
And now we have wandered to
A place you have not been
Before
Someplace new, here at the
Salt blown edge of the world
And I’m glad you came here with me

I’m glad to see nasturtium
Blossom like flame on flame
In your hair
And yarrow
And fennel
Maybe later I will
Look up their meanings
When I am missing you
Again

And soon I will twine
Your hair with
Beach pea and
Primrose
And pick shells and stones
From a beach a continent
Away
And we will look then
A few more days into the future

The sandwich is a many splendored thing, and one that is too rarely given the respect that it deserves. Its origin is shrouded in the myth of a gambling aristocrat; its family tree branches every which way from melts and burgers, submarines and crustless white-bread things, to tea sandwiches and open-faced concoctions and the Atkins-fueled excuse for a true sandwich, the low-carb wrap.

A long time ago, in a summer which is dogeared in my brain as one of culinary bliss, I ate sandwiches every day. It was a sandwich on a crusty roll or piece of baguette, made with a hard, peppery, all-beef salami (my partner at the time still aspired to keep kosher), with romaine lettuce and mayonnaise. (It evolved from a favorite snack of mine when I was in middle school, a sandwich of low-quality hard salami on Pepperidge Farm white bread.) This may be my favorite sandwich – it is certainly the sandwich that is most dear to my heart.

Other sandwiches reign supreme in different times of day or year. Although I eschew the traditional butter for more flavorful mayonnaise, cucumber sandwiches on white bread make me a happy girl with tea and gingerbread and friends-of-the-female-persuasion on a Sunday afternoon. In the summer when it is bright and hot, a tomato grown by somebody I love, sliced thin on a flavorful bread, again with mayo (or else the tomato will make the bread soggy). After a night of debauchery, at about 1:00 in the afternoon having woken not before 11:00 am, a burger with mayo (always, always with the mayo) ketchup, pickles, tomato and lettuce, extra-crispy french-fries and coffee are just the thing for me. I love veggie subs and cheese steaks and interesting combinations of cheeses and cold cuts and vegetables. I love grilled cheese with tomato soup. Or with out it, really. The BLT is a masterpiece, and the addition of avocado simply dreamy.

But the sandwich that fills my thoughts today, that blocks me from other lunch choices and that, through being just-a-bit-too-pricey, has completely undone my grocery shopping plans, forcing me to curtail those ventures till I wind up eating nothing for dinner but handfuls of almonds and grapes (delicious! nutritious! remarkably filling!) That sandwich is one sold at the Seven Stars Bakery here in Providence, and it is divine. It is made with fresh mozzarella from a local creamery, arugula, roasted red pepper and olive tapenade on a section of baguette. With a mug of sweet iced-coffee with coffee ice cubes, it is a little bit of heaven, to be slowly enjoyed over an Agatha Christie mystery in the middle of my day – every day.

I can’t afford it, but I can’t stop myself.

Sandwiches will do that to a girl.

Look at her being sexy, even in that big 'ole sweater ...

I have trouble with dichotomies. I really do. For instance, there’s this dichotomy between being smart and being sexy. As though if you value the one, you can’t value the other.

If this post rings true with you, go to www.femquake.com and join in!

At KinkForAll Providence, I spoke about sensuality and joy, and I mentioned how I love baking gingerbread in part because of how it perfumes my apartment. And that’s true. That is part of why I love gingerbread. But it doesn’t begin to cover it.

Gingerbread – this gingerbread, made with this recipe*, with lemon drizzle icing – is probably my ideal desert. I love  fancy deserts like creme brulee and seasonal treats like berries and cream, but I would eat gingerbread any time of day, any time of year. In fact, I’d eat it several times of day. It is the perfect teacake for an old fashioned tea party, with little watercress and cucumber sandwiches. It is delicious on a hot summer afternoon with a big glass of minted lemonade or iced tea, but I crave it most of all in the winter time, when that warm, deep spice strikes a cord of home and safety within me.

The truly brilliant thing about this gingerbread is that it is one of the few deserts I can make and eat all by myself. This is because its so moist that properly covered it will last as much as a week (if you can keep away from it that long), and as it sits, the flavors mellow and it gets denser and – if anything – even better. I find a slice of gingerbread a marvelous breakfast, afternoon snack, desert, and treat before dinner. Bit by bit it all disappears, and then I smoosh the crumbs together, gobble them up and check to see if I’ve got the ingredients to make gingerbread again this week.

Damp Gingerbread

You Will Need

• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (plus a bit for greasing)
• 1 1/4 cups Lyle’s Golden Syrup**
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• ½ tsp salt
• 1¾ tsp baking soda
• Ground Ginger To Taste***
• ½ tsp ground cloves
• ¼ ground cinnamon
• 1 egg, beaten with
• 1 cup whole milk

AND

• Small pot or sauce pan
• Large mixing bowl
• 9 inch round cake plate or spring form pan
• Wooden spoon
• Whisk
• Measuring cups
• Parchment paper

Preheat your oven to 340 degrees (f). Coat the inside of your cake pan with butter, making sure to get the corners and sides well covered. Line the bottom of the pan with a circle of parchment paper cut to fit.

Melt the butter, Lyle’s and molasses in your saucepan until combined. Combine flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon and cloves and whisk until entirely combined and free of any lumps – a little longer than you think you need to whisk it. Pour in the butter and syrup combination and mix with wooden spoon until smooth. Add the milk and egg and mix again, starting slowly, until smooth and combined.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for between 45 and 60 minutes, until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

I think this is particularly delicious with lemon drizzle icing, for which you need:

• The juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• bowl to mix in
• fork to mix with

Place the confectioners sugar in the bowl and add lemon juice, a little bit at a time, until it becomes a thick paste – you will only need a few teaspoons of juice.

When the cake is cool, remove from it’s pan and set on plate. Pour the icing over the top so that it will drip down the sides relatively evenly, let sit until the icing has set a bit, and enjoy – all day, every day, until it disappears.

* This recipe comes from Laurie Colwin’s “More Home Cooking” one of my favorite books by arguably my favorite food writer. She says that she got it from Delia Smith’s “Book of Cakes,” and made a few adjustments, and I have made a few adjustments of my own.

** Lyle’s Golden Syrup is a British light treacle. It has the consistency of molasses with a golden color a little darker and richer than honey.  It’s available in most American grocery stores in the either in the International Aisle or with other syrups. If you can’t find it, you can replace it with light cane syrup (not corn syrup) or all molasses (this will make a much darker, more strongly flavored cake). I have used all of these options, and find that the combination of Lyle’s and molasses listed here is far and away the best – but they are all good.

*** I like my gingerbread pretty spicy, so I use about 2 tablespoons of ginger. You can use as little as a 2 teaspoons or as much as you like – make a batch, see what you think, and adjust it for next time.

On Valentine’s day, May and I went to the movies. May asked a question, we had a conversation. I had a realization, which May turned into an idea. We went to brunch, and we told our idea to some friends. They gave their opinions. We went home, wrote up a proposal, and submitted it to the International Women’s Health Coalition Young Visionaries competition. If we win, we will have $1000 USD of grant money to fund the idea that came from a question and a realization.

The question May asked was: Why can’t somebody do for sex education what the “truth” information campaign did for education about smoking and big tobacco?

The realization I had was: Most of what I learned about sex, I did not learn in a classroom. I learned from my sister in her room, from my friends on the school bus. I learned from men who were good to me or bad to me. I learned from stories online, and from conversations online, and from sex online.

And not all of what I learned was quite accurate. It took me a long time to figure out that “sex” didn’t to refer to any meeting of male and female genitalia. I had this idea that nudist colonies must involve quite a bit of accidental sex when coming around corners.

It took me a long time to learn about the penetration part of intercourse. I can’t actually recall anybody sitting me down and telling me I was wrong – and if anybody did, I’m sure it was my older sister, not my health class teacher.

While having a shaky grasp of the mechanics of sex is unfortunate, it’s pretty benign. But a lot of young people “learn” more dangerous inaccuracies about sex. Like that you can’t get pregnant your first time (or if you stand up or do jumping jacks afterwards), or that barrier methods are more effective if you double up on them, or that if someone takes advantage of you while you’re too intoxicated to do anything about it it’s your fault for being so intoxicated, or that it’s not ok to say no to sex with someone you’re dating.

Many of us learn the truth about these misconceptions eventually, but have few opportunities to pass what we’ve learned on to other people still suffering from confusion, ignorance, or fear. So many more of us never learn, or learn one of a thousand different Hard Ways.

The proposal we submitted was: SexEdEverywhere.com. An online sexual and reproductive health information campaign, based around an educational video competition and an opportunity for people, and especially young people, to share what they know about sex.

Here is an excerpt from that proposal:

With the $1000 grant from the IWHC Young Visionaries contest we will fund a sexual health education and empowerment video campaign that highlights the reality that we learn about sex from disparate sources in many locations. The heart of this campaign, which we call SexEdEverywhere (“SEE”), will begin with a competition calling for submissions of 30 to 90 second videos that will be reviewed and featured on a network of 5 (or more) microsites over time. The campaign will be based at SexEdEverywhere.com, a website that will actively engage the people to whom it will speak: women and youth across the globe.

Each microsite will portray a scene in which real-life sexuality education happens, such as a doctor’s office, the back of a school bus, a mobile phone conversation, and many more recognizable places. We would subdivide the $1,000 grant into funding and prize money for the best 5 videos as based on creativity and educational impact, among other criteria. The winning videos would receive $100 and be posted on one of the first 5 microsites along with other vetted entries. There will also be a second phase, in which all entries are tracked over a set period of time. The video with the most views during that period will receive a $150 award for “going viral.”

I believe in frank and open discussion of sexual pleasure and sexual and reproductive health. I believe we should share information and talk to each other. We all have a lot to learn about our, and other people’s, bodies and as we navigate and explore there are a lot of decisions to be made. We need to be empowered, and to empower each other and our youth, to make these decisions wisely and based on sound information. We need to learn what is right, and good, and fun for ourselves and for others. I believe that Sex Ed Everywhere is an opportunity to share our information and spread truths, and I will do whatever it takes to help this project succeed.

And you can help. Please, vote for SexEdEverywhere, and spread the word to all of your supportive friends an acquaintances – help take control of sex education, and make something vital into something vibrant.

May was here with me for 10 days. He left Tuesday. The week began with KinkForAll Providence, and ended with the NELA FetishFlea, an event which we barely attended and which brought us nothing but pain, in the end. In the meantime there was laughter and closeness, connection and inspiration, tears and anger and terrible, stomach clenching fear. On our last day we were like happy ghosts, lying low in a space between the past and the future, loving each other and worrying and hoping. But it began with KinkForAll.

I cried there first. I cried over the loss of Z and all the things I never was to him. But I also saw friends and accomplices and people I admire brought together, talking and learning and making a good thing happen. I watched the four people who over the last year turned each other’s lives upside down begin to show the people they are turning into, the places they’ve come from, and I was pleased by what I saw.

I gave this talk:

Sensuality: Within and Beyond Sexuality – KinkForAll Providence from Emma Gross on Vimeo.

I talked about sensuality, and pleasure, and joy. I talked about sitting in the sunshine and tasting what you eat and adoring your lovers.

Now a week and a half later, I am looking for words that describe me. Not positive or negative, but true. Words that describe how I relate to myself, to the world around me, to my past and my future and to other people in my life.

I have discovered that I am possessive of those I love most. When I’m feeling emotionally safe, I am seldom jealous, but I am nonetheless possessive. I place a lot of emphasis on strong bonds between two people that are special, different from the bonds they share with anybody else. When my previous partner, Z, was in his pup mode, he was my puppy. He could be a lover, a friend, even perhaps a romantic partner to other people, but he was nobody’s puppy but mine. When we parted, the loss of my pup was one of the hardest parts.

Likewise with May. May was my boy. He belonged to me.  His submission was the greatest gift and honor he could have given me, and I took the best care of him I could. I was in control of the pattern of our sexual lives, the ebb and flow of his desire and denial. What I asked of him, he would do for me, which prompted in me an answering care in what and how and why I asked.

Now May and I must renegotiate our relationship. Neither of us want to, I think, but even with whole of the internet connecting us, and all our good work, the distance between coasts is an impossible gulf. We can bridge it only with a promise of living in the same place in the near future. As he has found his home, I would have to give up mine – a challenge that, for the moment, is insurmountable to me. Something had to give.

I can speak about everything I will miss and mourn, I could enumerate every bit of it, but the thing that  keeps catching at me and making me cry, all through the days, is the knowledge that he will not be my boy anymore. The sense of ownership and responsibility within a bond of love and equality, the certainty that I was paramount no matter what – writing this now hurts nearly as much as the catastrophic, wailing moment when I realized that all that would be gone. May is his own man, unbreakably strong, heart-breakingly sweet, amazingly tender, unusually lovely. He is his own man, and always was and always will be. And I will remember that he once belonged to me.

Through it all, though, through the aching loss and longing, I am finding silver linings and bright sides. Those who have observed me through times of trouble will note that I am optimistic to a fault. I can always make it ok, find a way in which I have been lucky, point out what I have to be grateful for. I am grateful to have my home and my plants and my friends and my family. I am grateful to have a new project on which May and I can work, something we can pour our extra energies into while the rest of the emotional dust settles, while we take stock of what we can keep and what we must pare away. While we come to terms, we can smile at each other over the good thing we are producing, over our strength in not giving up a working partnership that has glorious potential simply because not all of our potential together can immediately be met.

My brain constructs possible futures full of joy, full of getting what I want, and lives in those hopes. They may not be met, in the end, but by the time I realize they will not be I will have drawn enough solidity around me from elsewhere not to need them anymore. I can protect myself with optimism during times of trouble, without suffering loss when all does not turn out the best that it could be.

My talk from KinkForAll, like everything else, is bittersweet. I make allusions to a sexuality I may no longer have access to, to the very possession which I am currently mourning. But I came home from a morning at work the day May left to find him watching it, because even with that loss, it made him smile. And it makes me smile, and I will keep on smiling, and counting my moments of joy and pleasure, and looking with hope into the future.