Solstice letter

Dear one,

This letter is emotional but chill and respectful, as far as I perceive. Thank you if it’s something you want to let in.

I thought about you on Solstice when I was preparing to go to the land, and walking by the barn without my shirts to get gray sun– all the things you touched there. I felt grief remembering your birthday, and grief arching over all of it, that I wanted to be close to you and love you how you wanted to be loved. I’m sad we couldn’t do that.

But there is a flame of love and care, and it burns for you. Even if we aren’t regular friends right now, I always carry this love for you, and I want to become a person who one day could be your friend somehow. I pray to become a stronger person, and I do things to learn and heal.

There are three emails from you Dec 5 I never read, which I’m too afraid to read still. I wonder if they’re angry or nice or some truth there I might need, but I’m too scared. Thank you for wanting to say something to me.

Thank you for if you are patient with my ways of relating. There are a few things I wanted to tell you.

I talked to someone on solstice and mentioned how I usually come to the land to sun and pray. He brought up how a nun with a gun would come to the land toward the end of her life to stand in the creek to pray, not to socialize. He said he helped make her Spirit House in the garden.

I said that was the only altar or spirit house that I cry at. Also maybe the only one I ever left an offering at. An offering of my own.

I’ve been thinking about sex in new ways because I got close to a transfem friend briefly and thought a lot about consent and desire. She says she is not a person, and we had intense shards of conversation about the role of sex in her life. What she’s done for housing and survival.

I keep engaging people who are sooooo traumatized and have found ways of living that are creative. And I’m super traumatized also but have been able to heal in patchwork ways.

I’m sorry you were uncomfortable with the whole enchilada desire I had, to have a full on, well-rounded relationship with you. I realized a few days ago that I wanted sex with you, and I can’t have sex casually or episodically. I need a super safe container, what’s safe for me, and an ongoing thing that I conceptualized as whole enchilada.

But you know I love enchiladas. The more I venture out into the world trying out new relationships, I see that most people are not going for the dream I thought was a basic dream: a deeply mutually supportive, interdependent partnership like my spouse and I have, of telling each other everything, shared home, projects– tons of time spent together– shared life. I was so wrong about what people are looking for. Wow, so wrong.

If only a few people want and can do what I think of as partnership, what does that mean for me? If 10% of people want and can do that, then I’m looking for something rare. Or I need to keep healing and trying to scoot myself toward what other humans actually want and offer. I need to get more expansive about what I can do. Scoot scoot toward shared reality.

Not that I would become capable of casual sex necessarily, but at least a little toward the middle from the edge I’m sitting on.

I wanted trans sex with you as a way of going to the other world, facing the deepest places, and sharing the most transcendent bliss. I wanted to change with you in a sexual, trans way and learn with you there. But I see there’s a lot of fallout for even approaching that, without a strong support around the relationship.

My friend J calls it scaffolding– I was trying to build relationships without scaffolding. I’m not sure I understand the analogy, but at least partly I understand.

It confused me because other people can do sex without any scaffolding, so why can’t I? But I really can’t.

So I’m seeing my differences and learning my limits, and then learning about what other people are like in those areas. Which I don’t have much data for, since I was in those long mostly monogamous relationships, like 12 years with my second husband, and then me and my spouse for ten years not doing it with others. Not out of rigidity– just that’s how it worked out.

I’m sorry that I was full on wanting this specific kind of relationship with you, while only at the beginning of getting to know you, and that didn’t feel right for you. I see more now how I wanted sex with you, and I needed the whole enchilada to be able to do the sex.

But things were layered, and other truths were also true because just cuddle with you was the finest bliss I know. I didn’t need kissing or exchange of sexual energy– just to be a mammal with you and near you was the finest bliss on earth. I remember how it feels to cuddle you, and I cry.

Why is that? Because you are the best. Your intelligence is searing, and I adore you. Being near you is being near the divine.

But it’s funny because I always think how with kink, I don’t want a mean person to hurt me. I want a very kind, caring person to hurt me. It’s not fun if they actually are mean. I want the kindest person to do the meanest things.

Likewise, I’m not interested in a body as a body, so much as a vehicle for God. So I wanted to know your body and love your body as it is, and be close to your body. But it was for your God-truth-intelligence. Not intelligence like a number, but the quality of force as your intelligence whips through a canyon and takes everything.

Not quantity necessarily, but the quality of its force, or the flavor– how complex all the flavors of your intelligence are stacked into a strange …

Well, probably those are the main things I wanted to say. I wanted to thank you for things too, but I forgot now. It’s only been 21 days since I reached out to tell you I was sorry and would give you space, but it feels like Such a long time. My life has changed.

Silly of me, I had no idea my chosen family member getting top surgery was going to be a huge before-and-after life thing, and that they would be scared beforehand. I had no idea me and my transfem friend would go down the path we did, hit our issue, and the relationship would disintegrate.

I didn’t understand the intense housing insecurity my brilliant autistic traumatized trans faerie friends live in– didn’t understand that a huge dose of housing insecurity would flood my life, when being homeless again is my greatest fear.

The cot is set up at my place like when you were here, which I have rested on sometimes when the road noise is too loud in the bedroom, and I think of you every day. The book project is going well, although editing the interviews is hell on my body. Editing cuts into my writing time because I can’t be at a computer too long without pain derailing my life.

I want to commit like we can show up messy and be impolite to each other, but still love and share relationship. Yes, I want to commit really hard. I’m tired of the bonds feeling so fragile. I can commit on my end, and see what the other person does. But so far that’s seriously depleted me.

Some people complain about wanting community that will really stick around, but the standard is not being met, so they take off. If I want a more caring world, I need to stick around and care. But tossing it is easier for many.

I don’t know if you accept my commitment, but I would prefer if a thread is there from my heart to yours. I prefer if an argument doesn’t vanish it, because Spirit has bigger plans for us.

I was scared to see you on solstice, and I wished I would see you–simultaneously. If you were cold to me, ignored me, or looked at me. If you spoke a word to me, or anything… I would accept your coldness or your care.

I’m sorry I missed you, and I hope some other solstice, I can be near you again.

Thank you for how this year, I learned more than any previous ten years combined. I don’t want to overstate your role in that, but I wouldn’t want to understate either. You are amazing, and you help me.

Happy solstice.

So much, thank you, I love you.

Nest