Maybe I've just got nothing better to do than swipe pics, play with page layout, and avoid real living.  (I said that already.)  Anyway, *he* (you might see his pic as background for the first paragraph) is chiphi2x.  He's from Boston (of course), maybe not originally, but recently at least.  His website has pics of Boston Pride '98 (wasn't that the weekend I met Daniel?), and he's a faithful journaller; not for the frequency of his entries, but for their truthfulness.  Why else would I spend this much time talking about anything other than me? 

Maybe cuz he's cute.  Yeah, right!  I'd like the reason to be that shallow, but in truth, the dilemma this guy confronts me with is the same as the one JP confronted me with four years ago: How badly do I want to live?  (JP was the totally beautiful, totally human twentysomething with the unlimited heart who worked at the Bean Counter.  He considered me his friend, once.) 

This guy can't see me and doesn't know I exist, and I derive far too much comfort from that.  JP knew I existed, and he saw me withdraw from his reaching out.  There was a look in his eyes that final time, not a sad or injured look, but disappointment.  That last excursion in my direction took the form of an invitation to go whitewater rafting with him and a group of his friends.  Suddenly engulfed in an all too familiar terror, I dismissed his invitation as if he had not proffered it; I literally refused to believe he had just invited me along with him on his vacation. 

It's a relfex, a kind of emotional guarding that goes on without me even knowing most times.  That final expression in JP's eyes stayed with me though, and I did not understand it until months later.  Eventually at a safe distance I looked back and recognized my mortal fear of any kind of love, intimacy, or genuine friendship.  But most important for me today about that tragic failure to connect, is this: I did not choose to run away.  It is clear to me today.  I did not see two options, one challenging and one wimpy, and then chose the easier one.  I saw only one option, only one way out, only one escape from certain disaster. 

 chiphi2x reminds me of JP.  Read this.  God!  The gorgeous beauty of just being alive, of real connection with other beings.  Even discounting human relationships, just the connections we can make with other living creatures by itself is enough to startle you into an uncontainable joy.  The far greater joy of human connection is well beyond my comprehension, and therein lies my dilemma.  I am capable of dismissing all human love and contact, like some people I have known who lived their whole lives infinitely alone.  And though I sometimes try to emulate them, I really don't want to give up on life because there is more to life than I can possibly imagine.  Most days I don't think I'll ever get there, but on a few rare days I feel like I might.  Guys like JP and chiphi help me believe I will.  Their beauty resides least of all in their looks, and by far mostly in their goodness. 

 imagine yourself beside a big man, ridiculously big, 20 feet tall and eight feet wide.  You notice he's focused his attention on you, but it's not an angry glare, it's predatory, like a cat watching a mouse.  And it's not really you, but your BODY he's looking at.  He doesn't acknowledge your quizzical expression, or any expression from you for that matter; even if you dare to ask him out loud why he's looking at you like that, he still doesn't respond.  And it's not as if he listens to you and ignores what you say.  He doesn't even consider your words.  Imagine that a man that big, with that kind of intense, ready-to-pounce interest in you, also has no regard whatsoever for you as a human being. 

You are in trouble.  But it gets worse.  Imagine also that you are in a world where almost everyBODY is his size, and the few who are little like you have no power, no money, no jobs, no voice, and no way to survive apart from the big people.  And now imagine him holding you down, and though you struggle with all your might, you can't move anything.  You are totally overpowered and he is going to fuck you with a penis the size of your own forearm. 

Imagine you have never heard of sex; hardly ever the word, never the concept.  You have heard of pee and poop, and those things are never mentioned in polite company.  Little people like you don't even know what a penis is.  At least you didn't used to know.  Now you also know what secrets are.  Imagine, too, that at one time this giant was kind to you and protected you.  Imagine, you once loved him as your friend. 

 my life is an incomplete suicide, not because I have attempted it; I have not.  But because my survival consists of half-living.  I want to live, but the agony of all the living I could do and don't, all the emotional connections and relationships I shun, and the knowledge of people so totally alive as the guys I've mentioned, is getting to be too much pain.  The little child I once was set in motion a program of survival that required compartments and closets.  It was brilliant.  It worked.  But it depended on me believing absolutely and wholeheartedly that my internal walls were sacred, and that I would be annhilated if I tore them down.  Living fully will mean opening the closet where I keep the damage safely locked away and I have always believed that will be fatal. 

The real estate between the two is shrinking.  On one side, the 'closet survival program' has become overwhelming to maintain.  And living a half-life of gray has left me helpless to handle the rage and pain, which is closing-in on the other side.  It may seem ridiculous, but do not underestimate the determination of a four-year-old to survive; he will fight me tooth and nail to stop me from breaking down those walls.  The alternative in the other direction is suicide.  For some, that is not an alternative.  For me, it has always been. 

It is a lie, of course, but escape by suicide is a comforting lie that I chose to believe over the only other choice, which I was sure would be fatal: Continuing life among monsters with no way out.  And who knows?  Without the 'comfort' of such an escape route I might have died from a somatic manifestation of despair.  I was too old for 'failure to thrive'—after four whole years of life, one is pretty well established as staying.  But full-grown adults have succummed to less emotional trauma.  Anything could have happened. 

I don't think I would ever kill myself, because I love life more than I can say.  We little people left a precious gift reluctantly behind when the big one descended on us.  We stopped growing normally, we stopped embracing change, and in many ways we stopped living because we had no time or capacity to do anything beyond the work of surviving.  We stopped making friends. 

But we learned more about life than most.  I don't mean we suffered more, only earlier.  We finished lessons that some might never learn, lessons that for many don't start until adulthood.  We knew the end in every beginning, the pain in every joy, the darkness created by every light, and we recognized our own soul in every creature we ever met—from insects to humans, and even including monsters.  We are atuned to agony wherever it occurs and our reflex is to share the sufferrer's burden without hesitation.  We have cast temple-bulging screams into the night demanding a loud and clear Spiritvoice to sustain our hope, forgetting in our panic that it speaks only in whispers, and it has never failed. 

I never meant to take this all so far, and now it is tomorrow.  Suicide has tempted me, but now that I have talked to you about it, I'd prefer to leave it incomplete. 

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