The Nightmare of Summer 2024
on how to learn your lessons the hard way
When you first meet a potential romantic interest and they flake on you, only to come back strong, then flake again, and a voice inside you says ‘its drugs’, trust that voice.
If there’s wisdom inside telling of how you should probably be focusing on yourself, rather than dating, I’d recommend trusting that too.
For me, the Summer of 2024 was a nightmare to the highest degree.
I’ve never been one to have depressive episodes which go so deep to spur suicidal thoughts, but this last summer pushed me there. In all honesty, my daughter Logan is the reason my only scars are purely emotional. The need to be strong for her held me together.
I’m a lovesick bitch and a half. I’ve lived a life of romantic repression and never learned to deal with it. Instead, turning to addictions which see me through as best they can, praying for someone who might come save my ass. All this was just kindling for the misery of my summer’s great fire; these griefs and traumas carried so deep within.
And so, to the lumber itself.
The first part of 2024 was spent in the tail end of a friendship I’d placed far too much importance in, which turned into gut-wrenching heartache for me — from which I still have unhealed wounds.
That was proceeded by the dissolution of a nearly 10-year relationship the summer previous; marriage. A romance which had fizzled long ago, for which I’d spent much time in mourning before the actual end, but included a friendship I’d been foolishly fighting for. Losing that was very difficult.
Additionally, I carried a lifetime of unaddressed grief caused by sad attempts at reaching out for love, when I was both incapable of receiving it, and living within a world which had no source to provide it. Still, carrying all of this — stubborn as fuck — I rejected the call to turn inward and do my own personal work.
I was sad. I was lonely.
And I Was Determined to Date
I’m super jealous of cisgendered lesbians. Like, it hurts how jealous I am. Dating as a trans woman interested in women has sucked. It can be okay. It can be great if you find that person… I would think.
But I’m going to be real, at least for myself. It’s been awful. I’ve been treated terribly.
Not to say that any form of dating in the year 2024 is much better. It’s just a unique position for me to be in, as a non-operative trans woman, searching for sapphic romance.
Frankly, most of the girls I’m into love pussy. Like… a lot.
Lesbians have seemed to be pretty into that, from what I’ve found. It’s often a fundamental part of their identity. Modern lesbianism is less about womanhood and more about genitalia than the girls and closeted trans boys which own that container would like to admit.
So, what about a bi or pan girl?
That sounds cool. I’ve tried. They treat me as an in-between though, or just exactly like a boy. They expect me to lead and chase and not have feelings worth respecting. I’m sure there are many wonderful bi folks out there who would shatter my generalization. But like… where are they?
Looking for someone who truly sees you as a woman, when you’re trans, eliminates most everyone but other trans-adjacent folks. When you are not pan-romantic, like me, and have your own preferences to add to the mix — the pool shrinks down drastically.
So, this difficulty finding anyone and the grief caused from it, along with being treated as less than equal by cisgendered lesbians, has caused a bitterness to form within me. Also, just like a lifetime of being super-duper jealous of lesbian relationships.
Having longed for a romance with that flavor deep within my heart since I was a child — finally feeling I fit the part — it hurts to strike out so hard over and over.
Nobody owes me anything, to be clear.
Lesbians who do not include me in their definition of lesbianism don’t need my permission. Fuck them, they’re wrong, but I understand. Still, the affirming kind of relationship I’m looking for is one that by its definition sees me as the woman I am.
Containers of lesbianism are so fiercely equitable and compassionate and tender and real. It’s just what I want, and some lesbians do include me, even if only in theory. So, being in a phase of my life where I feel like myself for the first time. Carrying this lifetime and recent past of unhealed relationship trauma. Feeling an overwhelming amount of love within me to give, almost too much. And having nowhere to put it. Despite the parts of me that know better. Having been catfished for nudes a few weeks earlier… no joke. I was STILL determined to find someone who could fucking hold me or just be with me in some way that made me feel less lonely.
I straight up refused the call to find self-love instead.
And I Meet This Person
If there was a monster in this nightmare. It’s this person.
They were not a safe person at that time, especially for me. They were deep in addiction and lied to me consistently. They scared me a few times with their outburst of anger. But they are also so incredibly sweet of heart, their inner child is like my favorite person ever, and I’m just a sucker for people who have a bright light inside and need healing.
This person is also, beyond shadow of doubt, somewhere within the closeted trans-masculine spectrum. They’d admitted it to me plainly many times, and I always suspect my presence as a supportive and affirming person, who also saw that boy inside clear as day, likely triggered deeply.
On my first ‘date’ with this person they asked me to bring wine. Which they proceeded to drink out of the bottle in front of me immediately. As soon as I saw them, I knew. I could see it on their face; that intuition I’d had about drugs was correct.
Still, I’m at the lowest I’ve been in terms of self-worth and desperation, and beneath the layer of drugs I can see on their face, they’re absolutely gorgeous and just my type. They think I’m a stunner too. I could always tell that they were physically arrested by the sight of me, and it felt really good. They saw my beauty and even found words to acknowledge it for me, which so few people are able to do.
So, I hang out with them and we have fun. They don’t seem to have much of a short-term memory — much of what I’ve said in messages has been forgotten. Yet, they are the very unique vibe I look for.
They are a lesbian. They see me as a woman. They are a badass in their way. They are such a boyish girl. I’m attracted, and our sense of humors align.
Then they said things to me that I’d been waiting for someone to say to me forever, about my beauty, about my womanhood, about how into me they are. In this place of letting myself open to someone against my better judgement, but, oh so desperate to receive and give some love. They get a phone call, and then they get manic.
It’s a friend who’s telling them about some situation with a guy. They have to go help.
I’m really bummed out but I understand.
I say I’ll join. And I let them and their dog hop in my car. While we drive down the road to a park where their friend, who is homeless and living in a tent, is having a panic attack.
So, I’m trailing behind this person — who’s drunk and kind of madly panicking themself — going into the woods of some random ass park in the middle the night in a sketchy spot of Seattle. Looking up to the stars and making a prayer to be protected. Having just been on the very precipice of receiving something I’d been longing for so deeply, if even in the most incorrect way imaginable.
I’m rightly disassociated.
We go into the tent. They talk their friend down. It’s about the slender man or some shit like that. I am standing in this tent, just kind of in shock. Meth pipe comes out. Gets handed to my ‘date’. They take it, and I tell them so plainly.
If you smoke meth I’m leaving.
Addict mode is activated. They could not care less. Tell me to chill out. So, I watch them hit the pipe and I promptly leave the tent.
As I’m running out of the bushes, I remember re-associating all at once.
Everything came crashing in. Just, the suckage of it all. To have been right there, in terms of receiving some comfort. To have compromised myself so deeply to get there, and then to be here.
I was like scream-crying in the park as I ran back to my car.
Genuinely, maybe the most traumatic situation I can imagine for my emotional, romantic, broken-ass self. And so, I drive home, sending a bunch of angry texts. They call and try to get me to come back. I finished off the night with a teary-eyed 10-minute voice note. Good times all around.
So, I saw them on an off then for the next two and half months. Wish I was fucking joking. And I wish I could say the rest of the experience was better.
The meth was one-time thing, but the alcoholism wasn’t. Though, they were teetering on the precipice of recovery the whole time. Teasing me with that sweet self who would come out when they got mostly sober for a few days.
I wanted to help them. I’m a healer in my heart. I literally do energy healing and believe deeply in my ability to affect positive change when people let me. And this one. In all their nightmare brokenness. Told me they wanted that. They wanted to be better, so that — get this — I could be their girl.
I’ll tell you. That’s the shit I’ve been waiting to hear from someone. Because it made me so dumb.
They kept getting sober. Or, at least telling me they were. Then ghosting me to get loaded or just being surprise drunk when I showed up. Later, I came to find out this other person they’d assured me was a friend had been someone they were seeing more seriously the entire time, and that I was really just some side fling.
Still, having wanted that dynamic for so long, so badly, the side of it which was not insane and destructive, the lesbianism. I had been willing to lower myself to such a desperate level to receive it.
The number of times I cried buckets of tears for and because of this person is literally absurd. Every time I saw them, except like one or two, ended with me driving home crying, mostly for what I was lowering myself too over and over. They’d tell me they loved me then forget, again and again.
That ‘first date’ was terrifyingly emblematic of my entire experience with them.
There was a night this person sent me 300-plus messages, threatening me, saying every disparaging thing they could about my identity and appearance and voice and child. Threatened my life.
The same night fate chose, for the person whose friendship I’d lost earlier in the year, to reach out and inform me that they were officially not willing to be my friend again. It was the last day of July.
Coming off of all that. I was broken down to the lowest and most desperate place I’ve ever been. Fancying myself defiant, I sought comfort the only place I had available to me. A man and his partner.
To have been teased so thoroughly, not only of the lesbian relationship I’ve sought so long, but also by certain dynamics within it. I just broke.
Get it where you can, I supposed.
Except, sometimes, doing that violates wisdom held deeply within your body. Sometimes, doing that makes you sick physically and emotionally. Sometimes, it makes you hate yourself. Sometimes, it makes you angry at the whole universe for allowing and pushing you to lower yourself to that.
Still, I did it, and it was probably the least traumatic trauma of my summer.
I knew what I was doing with this person the whole time. I knew it was absurd. I was literally talking with my therapist about it every week.
But I was trying to follow my heart. And my heart wanted to see if I could help them. Hoped they might turn into who I could see hiding so deep within when they got sober. Felt like my person might be hiding in there.
I think I did help them. Honestly, I think I may have saved their life. But I also could have gotten myself very hurt. They showed some really scary sides to me.
It took that dear friend who I’d lost earlier in the year reaching out again innocuously about giving me back my sweatpants, then having a dream where they visited me, to pull myself back and remember that I was better than this. That I was really just acting out because I was sad and missed having someone close.
Well, Jeez. So, Then What?
I went to a cabin in September alone, which I had been begging this person to come to me with, and found myself again. Found the part of me I pushed away because it reminded me of the friend I’d lost. Reclaimed that part of self and found my future in it. My future as a writer.
Came back empowered and fired up. Coasting on a high of knowing what I wanted to do with my life again. And it not being wasting my time with dating apps.
But I’m still living with my ex and co-parent at this point, and she was not in a good place energetically. Me, being on a high, was not a synchronous vibe.
I used this newfound voice and strength and truth to hold my space and my own energy barriers better. Which involved standing up for myself when I felt I was being put upon by emotional manipulation. This energy of untouchable defiance, to a form of manipulation I had set the precedent of taking for so long in our relationship, caused them to attack me physically.
They couldn’t bring me down how they had before. But they sure found a way.
It was a very confusing couple weeks after that for me.
I had not experienced that flavor of trauma. The physically threatened, self-preservation type. The schoolyard was the last time anyone came at me in any way. And I’ve never been in a proper fight.
I can hurt with words. But it’s just not in my nature to be physically violent.
Above the trauma from being taken back to the schoolyard. There was also the shock and emotional trauma of it coming at home, and from the hands of someone who had once been my dearest friend. I was fine physically. It de-escalated when their screaming woke our daughter.
But I was not fine emotionally. And we had to live together for the next two months. I had nobody during that time.
I cannot recommended living and co-parenting with someone who has physically attacked you. It does a number on your nervous system.
And… so…. now what?
Now I’m Listening
I knew better with a lot of these things.
My heart steers me, but too often I fail to account for my discernment as well. Balance comes on many levels. Keeping our emotions at an even keel with what our rationality tells us is one of those.
Learning to hear what my heart has to tell me has brought me back to myself time and again. Following its call, led me to give myself the greatest gift I’d ever receive in un-repressing my gender identity. So, I trust what my heart says to me implicitly.
There’s a special kind of nervousness I feel sometimes. The kind of nervousness when you’re about to deliver a love letter or go into a job interview. Excited, a little scared, and definitely pushing your boundaries.
When I feel that kind of nervousness, I’ve learned to leap. I think I’ve gotten addicted to leaping bravely into open-heartedness — the practice having proven itself to be a portal for growth time and again.
When I look honestly at it, I take great pleasure in doing things that are courageously open-hearted. It’s a part of who I am at my core. It’s a part of how I uniquely wield my dark within my light. I’m very aggressive with my love. And I enjoy being this way. I love delivering a big bomb of love into the hearts and places that need it most. Still, I can learn to find a better balance.
One where I honor the reality of how my heart feels. While also honoring what my discernment rightfully knows. Without having to learn all my lessons through grief and trauma and negative conditioning.
Without having to learn everything the hard way.
Instead, growing through the positive conditioning of creating healthy space for myself first, and naturally attracting the person I wish to stand beside me.
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