#gratitudeNow: Nug it.

So sometimes, life teaches me things I don’t particularly want to know about myself.

One of those things is that despite literal decades of study of mindfulness, and Taoism, I’m not a patient person. Particularly with myself.

It’s not even been three weeks since Spacey’s death. As you might imagine, I’m a mess.

Some days, I’m carried aloft by decades of happy memories, shared laughter, the delight of shared work, values, and priorities. Other days, all those things wrap around me like a shroud, holding me so tight I can barely move, barely breathe.

I’ve been having a whole lot of trouble sleeping. I wake up around 3 in the morning, remembering seeing him at the viewing, touching his body, and feeling how cold it was. As opposed to the way he gripped my hand so tight, just the week before.

When people bring him up, I’m inclined to burst into tears.

I don’t concentrate well.

I alternate between not wanting to eat at all, and gorging myself on foods.

It’s not a surprise really. Anyone and EVERYONE I’ve been talking to about this, has assured me that this is all perfectly natural.

Except to me. Because I often seem unable to treat myself with the same patience, kindness, and compassion I give so easily to everyone else.

Today I slept in until around noon. I mindlessly watched television.

At one point, with my partners Squee and Moliére’s urging, I took a shower, put on fresh pajama pants, and, you guessed it - made myself some chicken nuggets.

We watched Ted Lasso together, remotely.

I leaned into my love of the show, and shared it with them. It helped me a ton.

Sometimes, simple comfort food and care from others is what’s important to have. I’m not required to operate at peak efficiency all the time. Sometimes you have to rest.

#gratitudeNow: Departures

I’m sitting at my gate at the airport, waiting for my flight home from Spacey’s funeral.

I feel calm this morning, safe.

The weekend was hard, very very hard but also good.

Sister and I spoke about him and in a way for him, at the funeral, at the viewing, and in all the little times and places that other mourning people sought solace and comfort.

I made deep connections with PowerFlower and her lovely husband. She spoke at the service too, in a deep and mighty way.

Between us we gently but firmly cradled everyone there and sort of shook the rafters.

It felt good.

And we spent quality time wrapping Mae in the warm loving embrace that is the continuance of our family during such an abrupt and painful departure.

This morning as ‘flower and Mr. Flower (he’s going to need a nickname too and shortly, I’m leaning into “Donuts”) drove me to the airport I got a powerful message from my brother:

TAKE JOY IN NEW THINGS.

Love what was, and hold onto it, yes. But also, welcome new love and joy and connection and growth into my life, my heart, my day.

I hear you brother.

#gratitudeNow: Kindness and Football

I just love the heck out of the show Ted Lasso. Spacey got me hooked on it. At first, I was super dubious about it. It’s a show about sports!

But it isn’t really. I mean, yes it IS a show about an American high school football coach, who gets hired to coach a professional soccer team in England. But it’s about way more than that. Ted Lasso is this irrepressible optimist, who digs in deep to the emotional lives of the people around him, and works hard to make their lives better.

The show is filled with characters you feel very strongly about. Some you love, some you hate, and some just utterly bewilder you. It’s brilliant.

If you haven’t seen it, you should.

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading this post, because spoilers.

Kit man Will, and Assistant Coach Nate, who used to be the kit man.

So in season one, you get to know Nate Shelly, the team kit man. He's this shy, affable, sort of nobody. He loves his job, he loves football, he loves the team, and he's invisible. There is beat after beat after beat showing how he's just this big nothing burger.

The team owner Rebecca thinks she’s never met him, and doesn’t know his name. The players regularly treat him like garbage. At one point he accidentally gets locked inside the luggage compartment of the team bus.

But Ted never treats him like that. From the minute Ted meets him, he’s kind to him. And in his kindness, Nate blossoms. And other people around Ted and Nate see Ted do this and learn from him. Nate goes on to become an assistant coach. He’s really smart, really knowledgeable about the game, and his suggestions really help the team get better.

Then in the second season, this other thing happens.

When Nate becomes assistant coach at the end of Season 1, there’s this moment of surprise, where Nate thinks he’s being sacked. And he lashes out, says something really terrible to Rebecca. Which is quickly dismissed as a mistake, once he realizes he’s been promoted, and everyone laughs.

But it’s the seed of something much darker that comes to pass during season two.

The team hires a new kit man, Will. And right away, Nate takes issue with pretty much anything and everything Will does. Which seems both petty in a funny way, and funny in a petty way.

It's really smart writing though because after the first couple of times it happens, you get the sense that there's really something else much more troubling going on here.

Nate is incredibly shy and has very little self-confidence. He struggles to be respected trying to make a reservation in an everyday restaurant for his parents’ anniversary dinner.

Rebecca teaches him how to be confident by psyching himself up. And when he does it, the way he does it is sort of gross and a perversion of what she taught him. He's really mean to himself.

Later in the season you see him around his father and something starts to become quite clear. His father is an unkind bully. He diminishes Nate's accomplishments, talks down to him, treats him like an unruly child.

And Nate, in turn takes it out on people when he can too. He's incredibly cruel to players who used to tease him, and downright abusive to the new kit man Will.

As the season goes on, this gets worse and worse. Nate spirals out of control, becoming saturated in a mixture of anger, aggression, self loathing, addiction to attention, and an ever-growing need for validation.

If you get something truly astoundingly awful that I'm not going to tell you because you have to see it for yourself.

So I really love this show, and I get a lot out of it. It's a kind of comfort food to me that I watch over and over. In part, that's because it helps me feel close to Spacey. Which I really need right now, because of what he's going through.

But the really smart writing in this show also shows me something else that sometimes I struggle to elaborate to others.

Everyone around us affects us. We affect everybody else too. Nate becomes more and more cruel because that is what is taught to him by his dad. He's perpetuating the cycle of unkindness and abuse.

Ted short circuits that cycle, but he's only one guy and he has his own issues to deal with. So along the way Nate gets a taste of what it is to be valued, but it's not enough to overcome the negative messaging he was raised with and continues to receive.

Nate is not the only person in the show who have to deal with stuff like this. One of the players, Jamie who is an absolute Ace, a star is also a prima donna and an asshole. And his dad is an abusive piece of shit.

Jamie manages to get away from it, and better himself but it's clearly an uphill struggle for him too.

I want to think that Jason Sudeikis, the star of Ted Lasso, and one of the people who write the show is showing us all this as something of a cautionary tale.

I think that the show at its’ heart is about the choice between kindness and cruelty.

It's really a powerful choice.

#important: A sad note about a bad thing

So I’ve been sitting on some very awful news.

At the end of July, Spacey was out running and was terribly injured when a tree fell on him.

He has a traumatic brain injury and his spine was seriously injured. He’s in a coma, recovering slowly.

I’m posting about it here because one of the more exhausting parts of dealing with this sort of thing is endlessly talking about it as more people not in the immediate fallout periphery of the event find out.

It’s a rough time for our family, and your warm wishes are very welcome.

I love Spacey more than I have words for. Although we aren’t related by blood, we have called one another brother for a very long time. He’s been a part of my life for almost 30 years.

There is a post about this app on the fetlife group. You’re welcome to leave your good wishes there. There’s not a gofundme or anything like that. If we need to do that sort of thing, I’ll post about it there.

Thanks.

#gratitudeNow: Trauma and Casper

Okay, so it’s been a long, long time since I posted here. Let’s address the elephant in the room about this, shall we? I’ve been Going Through A Thing™.

It’s a personal problem, it’s in my family, and I haven’t been talking about it, here.

And that’s a trend that’s largely going to continue. When said problem first reared it’s sharp-toothed head, back in December, I reached out to a very small group of people I’m very close to, for love and support. If this is unfamiliar to you, if you have no idea what the heck I’m even talking about, that’s because you’re not in that group.

Which, I promise you, isn’t any sort of personal slight, it’s not a comment on your worth or merit as a human being, or even as my friend.

Sometimes I live in a weird liminal space. Because of my work in the kink community, because of the podcast, because of my books, my app, my advocacy, I’m somewhat of a public figure. People know me, and know about me. There’s all sorts of wildly intimate stuff about who I am, what I like, and how I live, that’s very much in the public eye.

But the truth is, I am more than those things which I show to others so openly. I’m a person like anyone else, and have my own burdens, my own pains, my own struggles. And during this particular one, I found myself in a new mode, sort of.

My default is to be The Guy Who People Come To For Help And Wisdom. I’m that good listener, with compassionate perspective, who’s always got a minute for them what needs me. But for the past 6 months or so, that’s not been me. Instead, I’ve withdrawn. I’ve reached out to people I feel safe being vulnerable to, and who have the chops to do the heavy emotional labor lifting I’ve needed. I have a fantastic therapist, who I talk to all the darn time.

Things are on the upswing for me. Which is good.

No, that does not mean there’s about to be some big debrief that them-not-in-that-circle will suddenly get to consume. That’s not happening.

Something odd has happened to me during this time, too. I’ve gained some perspective on my public relationship with acquaintances.

For one, there are people who only know me through that stuff. And I’ve had a few super awkward interactions during this time, where people came looking for me to sort of “Do Business as Usual” or something, and it left me feeling very bad. Leaned on, consumed like a product or a food. I’ve shied away from these folks, and these sort of imbalanced interactions like a toddler touching a hot stove. But upon some reflection, I realize that these are unwitting things. When people interact with me in that way, they’re only leaning into what they know of me. I’m not like King Baby of Diaper Mountain or something, but I do have a public persona which I’ve cultivated, and through which some people have their dealings with me. That’s not good or bad, it’s not their fault. And when those interactions feel selfish or one-sided to me, when I’m low, it’s kind of on me to recognize the nature of the connection, and its inherent limitations.

For another, I’ve gained some perspective on empathy, and what I’ll call “toxic sympathy.” You know, something terrible will happen, and some well meaning, but hapless goober, will express how the victims of said something are in their “thoughts and prayers.”

I gotta tell you, that shit pisses me off.

Because, let’s say your beloved Uncle Hypothetical gets a terminal illness, Helpful Harry’s thoughts and prayers are worth exactly nothing. Uncle Hypothetical is still going to wither and die while you watch, helplessly.

Those thoughts and prayers aren’t going to call the hospice, to set up care, they’re not going to talk to your HR department about taking short term disability so you can move in his house, and feed him, and wipe his ass for him, or whatever. They’re not going to help you get to sleep at night, knowing your uncle will be dead soon. They aren’t going to fix your lack of appetite, or motivation to even get out of bed.

What they will do, what they are doing is making Helpful Harry feel good about himself, while he insinuates himself in your business, uninvited, and uses your trauma, as a balm for his own pain.

Yes, I realize how angry this sounds. Yes, I’ve been this angry about it.

I was talking about this with my therapist today. And I had a bit of an epiphany. Recently, a particular Helpful Harry has been really trying to worm his way in to my support circle, offering me that “thoughts and prayers” flavor support that I neither invited them to do, nor want. It’s happened a number of times now. In the not too distant past, I actually took them to task for it. I said, “Hey… please stop making my pain about your desire to help me." I thought they got the message.

Just a few days ago, they did it again, wishing me a good day and a good week, “if it’s okay to do that.”

My response was a simple emoticon, a thumbs up.

Which is like, return receipt for human connection. It’s the barest minimum acknowledgement you can give another human being. It’s like that bullshit nod that men give one another as we walk past each other in a crowded space. “Why yes, I, a man, see that you, another man, has seen me. Thanks.” The social-media-thumbs up, it’s like that, but LESS.

I’ve been stewing about it for a few days.

An old ex of mine used to have this problem behavior, that really bothered me. She would intentionally ghost people, as a means of getting them to leave her alone. Instead of just directly speaking to someone, and telling them she wasn’t interested, or didn’t have time for them, or found their love of Wooden Clog Dancing Shows repugnant, or whatever, she’d just not answer the phone, not reply to the email, etc.

I remember seeing her do this, and being really revolted by it. It was one of the things that when we did split, made me glad to be done with her.

But I’ve begun to see that human interactions aren’t cut and dry, aren’t simple. Sometimes, when my interactions with someone are painful for me, and the other party can’t or won’t hear what I have to say to them about it, then it’s time to go Casper. By which I mean, ghost them in a friendly way. Give them that bare minimum of interaction which says, “Actually no, it’s not okay to interact with me in this way. But you’re still a person, and I wish you well.”

Sometimes, the things I have gratitude for, they’re not very pleasant things. But that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile. Life is filled with great joys and hideous pains. I’m glad that through resiliency and experience, I learn better each day how to deal with them.