For Jenn…only because of you am I here now

My advice to anybody writing a memoir is:
Be prepared for the revelation of things you don’t even dream are going to come up.
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Dear Rick,

I am writing this to you because in you is a good, dear friend named Jenn for whom you are letting yourself be free.

I’m not sure where to start.

So, let’s skip the beginning, the early inklings of when you knew, really knew who you were when you “woke up” at age five in a Sunday School class and saw the whole universe for what it was, or at least how humans try to convince themselves that it is when it really isn’t (unless, of course, we say that our fictions are part of the universe, etc.).

Instead, let’s talk to each other about the here-and-now, about who you think you are at this moment.

Every moment.

I am genderless, the closest word I can use to describe myself since I do not identify with any popular labeling system categories.

I am not heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, gay, transsexual/transgender or bisexual.

I am not monogamous or polygamous.

I am not asexual.

I love everyone and every thing equally and have, since youth, struggled against those for whom labels are important means of dealing with the organised chaos of the local fractal spinoffs of the sets of states of energy we call the [known] universe, our little piece of real estate in the Milky Way Galaxy.

I am essentially a happy person, getting happier as I deprogram myself from the training of my youth which no longer applies to me.

I accept people for whom they profess to be or want to be.

Without my friendship with Jenn, I would not be here talking about this and that will lead to another discussion with myself, perhaps publicly on this blog, about how I want to keep her in my life, even though it means reducing the presence of others in my life I will not talk about here right now.

I will not go back to who I was before, or who I pretended to be.

I am, by training, primarily an adult male, raised in the sub/culture sometimes labeled Western Civilisation.

But in my thoughts, I am multitudes of people, young and old, male, female and in-between, thinking in languages I do not know but understand on a level I quickly label emotional/rational.

I wish I had someone with whom I could share this genderless life, someone who enjoys and knows what it’s like to be an actor in your own mental play on life, on words, on/with people.

I don’t wish I had someone.  I actually know someone, someone who keeps showing up in my thoughts and in my life no matter how many times I’ve tried to turn away from that person (primarily female).

In my thoughts, I live 400 to 500 years in the future, not here, when we’ve overcome many of the gender-based issues passing through global subcultures like a meme or social virus.

I grew up on “live and let live,” “make love, not war” and other peace-loving slogans of the 1960s counterculture.

But a big part of my retirement fund depends on perpetuating global conflict for the sake of profits in the military-industrial complex, which also feeds the space exploration business I want to thrive so that I’m looking back at this blog from Mars on 6th May 2050.

Life is complex and won’t become less so because of one blog entry.

Putting these words in a blog is easy.

What I do with them next I do not know.

By driving these vocabulary stakes into the cliffs of life, I’m giving myself a chance to climb higher, to tell myself that it’s okay to be me, whoever I am and turn out to be, because I live with myself every moment of every day until my last breath.

Learning is a lifelong passion, including learning more about myself.

I want to share my happiness with others and no longer let compromise define my relationships with them.

I no longer avoid the potentially emotional and financial painful consequences of letting me be me.

Now, time to get ready to go to work and save lives!

Thanks for listening to yourself.

Have a great day!

Regards,
Rick