It's 2023 and You're Going to Pride

The parking is always a nightmare, even when you think you’ve safely parked in the vendor area. A couple hours into the day, a festival volunteer asks you to leave your booth to move your car and find other parking. They suggest a neighboring garage, which you queue up for while your car’s AC blasts warm air at your face. By the time you’ve made two loops inside the garage, you realize that the entry gate doesn’t calculate the garage’s capacity, and so you are now trapped in a continuous train of anxious gays looking for parking spots that don’t exist. At some point, you take a wrong turn and wind up in a dead-end near the entrance, where cars are still filtering in, obliviously entering this queer crab trap and watching you scoot your bright yellow Honda Fit back and forth to make a 17-point turn.

You do eventually escape and make your way to the parking lot next to the Indiana Historical Society. After you pay your $20 to the gate attendant, you hear her coworker shout to her to let in Marriott employees for free. You briefly consider telling the attendant that you work there, but then you remember that you’re wearing a glittery mesh shirt, a dog collar, and shiny gold shorts.

That shirt, as it turns out, is rapidly deteriorating in the heat. The insides of your elbows are plastered in sparkles and when you look down your shirt at your chest, you look like you’ve been bodied by a fairy, which may yet happen, if you’re lucky.

But for that dream to come true, you must pass the Good Ol’ Gauntlet. The first encampment of Bible-thumpers is waiting on the lawn of the Historical Society. You slow your pace and keep yourself between the megaphones and the group of queer teenagers wearing trans and non-binary flags as capes. You’re good bait in your shiny booty-shorts: small, unassuming, smiling pleasantly, inherently approachable despite the rainbow attire. The thumpers focus on you, pushing pamphlets your way while the caped crew passes mostly unharrassed. The evangelists say something directly to you, about you. You smile and absorb nothing.

A Historical Society employee is stationed next to them and he apologizes to you on their behalf and makes sure you know these people have nothing to do with the Society.

“I didn’t figure the Historical Society would support these guys,” you say. “Y’all are good folks.”

Suddenly, you are receiving an impromptu lecture from the employee about the Society’s NRA funding and its affection for Mike Pence.

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” you say.

“Spread the word,” he tells you.

You nod and continue on.

There are more proselytizers this year than you’ve seen since you first attended a Pride festival. They are stationed around the ticket line to the festival grounds, waving black signs with scripture in a stark white font.

“Love is patient! Love is kind!” a sunburned man on a crate yells at passersby. “It does not envy! It does not boast! It is not proud! Do you hear that? Love is not proud? Does that sound familiar to you?”

You are familiar with 1 Corinthians. You wonder if this finger-jabbing man is proud of what he’s doing. You wonder if perhaps he’s even a little bit envious as you position yourself between him and the line of festival-goers.

The festival grounds team with flags and people of a thousand different colors. You return to your booth and you watch beautiful drag queens sweep effortlessly by on heels that somehow don’t sink into the soil. One of your leather pup friends hugs you and takes a selfie with you in the shade of the canopy. You see young folks wearing pronoun pins and you remember being their age and not even knowing trans people existed. You only knew that you were an alien back then. There just weren’t other words for what you were, so you were an alien, and gosh, that explained a lot. You were so lonely, so clumsy, so far from home.

As the afternoon wears on, your voice grows hoarse from greeting your friends and complimenting strangers’ makeup. You buy a drink that’s mostly tequila and the bartender - who for some reason assures you that she’s straight - accidentally makes a second drink, tells you you’re cute, and hands it to you. You’ve played this game with your straight cis female friends before and know this isn’t flirting but it’s nice to be called cute and even nicer to double the drink on such a long, hot, dusty day.

You’re there for several hot hours, the rainbow foil stars melting into your sweat and pasting themselves over your body. You feel like a very slowly transforming were-disco-ball.

Eventually, you’re maxed out. Your girlfriend is recovering from a nasty cold but she came with you today despite it and you’re so grateful but if she stays here any longer she’s going to collapse. You haul your cooler a few blocks to the parking garage. The street preachers have dispersed. Love apparently wasn’t all that patient in the end.

You go to dinner with your friends at a pub you and your girlfriend have been meaning to check out for a few months. The antique interior briefly unsettles you until you see the Progress Pride pin on the server’s lapel. It will be OK to use the bathroom here.

After you pay the tab, one of your friends gives you a drawing he’s made of you as a Pokemon trainer and you are so surprised and delighted and tired that you tear up. How incredibly thoughtful. How kind, how generous, how full of love.

You get home and want so badly to just topple into a nest of pillows but your girlfriend won’t let you so much as sit on the edge of the bed. The sparkles spackled across your torso would breach containment and permanently glitter your sheets. You MUST take a shower, but at least your girlfriend has offered to help.

You scrub the grime and sunscreen off of each other and trade time under the shower head. There’s another party you could attend tonight but you’d rather stay here, together.

Later, as you snuggle on the couch with your love, you search “indiana historical society pence” and discover the Society did indeed host an event and book-promotion for Mike Pence last November. Unfortunate. You wonder what your uncle would say in the Society’s defense. You have an imaginary argument with your uncle even though you know you’re both on the same side, even through he was the one that introduced you to the local queer scene. You give up on the argument because you’ve already rehashed it too many times. You are frustrated with his optimistic expectations but you can’t bring yourself to argue against hope.

Just before bed, you double-check 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 and wonder if the red-faced men screaming hate at children ever got to the end of that famous passage:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And so will you.

Artificial

When I clicked to add a post (my first of 2023, a desperate bid to inspire myself to return to writing), I discovered a new button twitching in the upper left corner of my drafter. Yes, actually twitching, jiggling back and forth every few seconds to catch my attention. It succeeded, and upon hovering my mouse over the lightning bolt icon, I was not surprised by the floating text announcing Squarespace AI.

AI is already selling itself to me in so many places. It offers to write emails on my behalf. It conjures descriptions of parties I want to throw with my friends. It wants to banter with me on SnapChat.

It’s already old news that ChatGPT and its brethren are not reliable resources. At this stage, AI is a smooth liar, citing papers that don’t exist and inventing reasonable-sounding but ultimately inaccurate answers to the questions it begs us to ask (sometimes with costly consequences). Some say that the current shortcomings are nothing to worry about; just a nuanceless mirroring of linguistic patterns that can’t match the human voice.

That may be true right now, but how quickly will it advance? And even if the product is subpar, are the hollow paragraphs and overly-rendered art pieces of today already enough to take work away from living creators? Gotta say, it was deeply disheartening to rev myself up to work on some overdue creative writing only to discover the hungry phantom that is wide-spread AI text generation haunting my drafting screen with its annoying “LOOK AT ME!!!” wriggling.

Sure, “Squarespace AI (beta)”, go ahead. Write about my experience of top surgery, the original subject of this post:

“I underwent top surgery two years ago and it has been life-changing. As a transgender man, having a chest that aligns with my gender identity has brought immense relief and joy. The surgery itself was a major undertaking, but my surgeon and medical team were incredibly skilled and supportive throughout the process. The recovery period was challenging, but I had a great support system to ensure that I was taking proper care of myself. Overall, having top surgery has allowed me to feel more confident and comfortable in my own skin, and I am grateful for the opportunity to have had it.”

Oh sweetheart, I WISH it was two years ago. Anyway, what a detail to provide, surely not stolen from some other trans person’s writing.

Because that’s what AI is right now: a regurgitation machine. It’s a toy and a shortcut and a plagiarist and a hallucinating self-appointed professor. But it won’t be like that forever. In fact, there are concerns about the pace at which this technology is developing, the lack of constraints on it, and even the potentially apocalyptic consequences of its present trajectory.

A little paranoid? Maybe, but hey, I’m originally a science fiction writer, after all. With the rise of political deepfakes, AI chat “buddies” that feed and grow off our interaction with them, and art-thieving image generators, I feel my anxiety is at least a little justified.

I mean, that little AI blurb about top surgery was essentially accurate. Yes, I absolutely felt relief and joy, and recovery was uncomfortable at best, and I had a great support system. Like, a really, really great support system. I have very rarely felt the kind of communal love that I received in the weeks before and after my top surgery. Friends and family were so incredibly generous both financially and emotionally. Over and over, I was moved to tears by the kindness I experienced in those magic weeks.

Yes, that blurb summed the general feeling up, but it doesn’t know me, doesn’t know how nervous I was for days before my surgery because it felt like it might be yanked away from me, something I fretted about even as I donned the surgical gown in my little pre-surgery cubicle (backwards, because, you know, the nervousness). It doesn’t know the sudden desperation I felt when I realized anti-trans legislation was closing in around me, the fear that choked my heart like strangling vines at the thought that my long-delayed surgery would be delayed even further (or worse). AI couldn’t know, much less express, just how much of a struggle it was for me to give up on my original surgeon and seek out someone out-of-pocket, someone I couldn’t afford without the incredible, tear-inducing assistance of loved ones and strangers alike.

Only I can share the lived truth of my experience. There are so many details I could call upon, like how I tried to take a shower the day after my surgery, accidentally tugged my blood-filled drainage bulbs, and genuinely thought I was going to pass out on the pink and blue tiles of the bathroom floor. It was worth it to rinse off the hospital smell, and I had my partner’s supportive, experienced arms to keep me on my feet.

Oh man, I could go on and on about those damn bulbs, which dangled, gory and translucent, from both sides of my ribs like some sort of deep sea parasite. And when they came out? Somehow, I hadn’t realized just how deep they went, and when the nurse pulled them free, it felt like she was tugging flaming snakes out of my pecs by their tails.

It was all worth it. I am overjoyed! I am grateful! I am still in awe of my own reflection as I massage jojoba oil into my purple-pink scars every night, and last week, I went swimming with my top off (don’t tell my surgeon). At last, my shirts button evenly over my torso and I don’t have to worry about throwing on a binder to answer the door. To my absolute delight, I can cross my arms and wear tank-tops and hug my friends without feeling constantly aware of my chest!

I don’t know what the future holds, but hey, even if we are plunging deeper into a cyberpunk dystopia, at least I’m entering it feeling more myself than ever.

And, you know, tit-free. That feels pretty damn good.

Enjoy this very flattering photo of me asleep on the couch after coming home from surgery. The fortress of pillows was a necessary line of defense between me and my incredibly clingy Chihuahuas.

The World's Smallest Digital Sketchbook Library

I’m not sure what triggered my memory to check The Sketchbook Project’s site for the status of the book of poetry I submitted last year. I think it must have been when I was cleaning up my art desk (an uncharacteristic move, I know) and found the drawer where I’d stowed my first draft of the book, back when the project had been something else, a sort of memoir-esque comic that was too ambitious for me to complete by the deadline.

I was very aware of the deadline, which is why I rebound my sketchbook twice: first with sturdier sketch paper for the comic, then with neon-bright printer paper for my last minute plan change. I’d been given the sketchbook by some beloved friends, and as I am unable to complete any significant task without forcing myself into a procrastination-induced panic, I waited until months after I’d received the gift to put serious work into it.

It was a terrific gift: a little, customizable book I could fill with just about anything and then return to the Brooklyn Art Library, which houses the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world. I was delighted by it, and did a great deal of daydreaming about how to fill it (without making tangible progress, of course). I started getting my ideas on paper in the beginning of 2020, aware of the late summer deadline, but unaware of what 2020 had in store.

I tried my best. I scheduled out my pages, set alarms on my phone to remind myself to work on them, and came up with schemes to create large, artsy-fartsy filler sections. In the end, I just couldn’t do it in the way I’d originally intended. I did my second rebinding and decided to feature some of the poetry I’d written that spring instead so that I’d at least have something to submit.

I was still proud of it, for what it was. I’d worked hard to write a piece of poetry every day during the month of April (National Poetry Month!), and this way, I’d get to kinda-sorta publish some of that work. I took some photos, packaged my book up, and sent it on its way just in time.

Then I forgot about it, because if something isn’t in my direct line of sight, it has a 50% chance of being immediately flushed from my brain, an issue that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. In this case, I knew it would take a while for the sketchbook to be digitally uploaded, and that I’d get a notification when it was, so I felt safe dismissing it from my mind.

A year passed, and the notification never came. Whatever triggered my memory of the book also compelled me to check on its status. Had it really been a year? Or was it only months ago? Time’s been goopier than usual, so it seemed reasonable to me that I’d submitted more recently than I thought, and that my book might still be in line to be uploaded.

When I logged into the site to check, however, I discovered that my book had never even arrived.

It was just gone.

I sat there stunned for a few seconds before I started to cry. Actually, “cry” may be too gentle of a word for what I was doing… I was bawling. My body suddenly felt so heavy that I just folded forward onto my desk and sobbed and keened and blubbered until my cat finally decided to come chew on my hair, snapping me out of it.

I knew I’d probably never physically hold that book again, but the concept that it was missing from the world in a way I’ll never be able to track sent such a thunderbolt of grief through my heart that I felt actual pain.

I have felt that pain several times in the past few years. Loss is Change’s ugly cousin, and it has visited all of us recently. While change comes with the promise of an exchange, a transformation of one thing into another, loss is just… loss. Something is gone. Nothing inherently takes its place, fills that gap. There aren’t answers or explanations, there is only absence.

I’ve been preoccupied with loss lately. I live in fear of it. I fear losing my job, losing my pets, losing my friends and family, losing my mind. In fact, earlier this year, I was so convinced that I was indeed losing my mind that a therapist proctored a series of tests for me, including an intelligence test. I’d been so scattered and sluggish and forgetful that I assumed my brain was physically deteriorating. I scored fine. I scored well, actually, though I know intelligence isn’t really that simple to measure, and that my various privileges inflated my score. But what if I used to have an even better score? What if my cognitive functions are slowly draining away? What if I finally lose it all?

Of course, the truth is that I will lose it all, one way or another. I am impermanent, which is a concept that’s even harder to comprehend than loss. All I have is right now, and that’s always draining away as well. I won’t get the minutes back. They, too, are lost.

Or are they?

I’ve spent a long time thinking of Change and Loss like those cousins - separate yet connected - when I really should be thinking of them as different states of the same phenomenon. It’s all just change, the universal constant that I struggle so eternally with, but sometimes I must take a more active role in the transformation.

For example, while I may never get back my ever-dwindling minutes, it’s not like they never existed. I exchange each moment for a memory. And when I lose those memories? Well, that’s a bit harder to consider. Just because I can’t remember them, however, doesn’t mean they never happened. Maybe the things I forget will be something someone else remembers. Maybe it’s not all about me in these exchanges.

Maybe it all cascades.

On my (hopefully distant) horizon, I see death, the ultimate transformation. I will lose all that I am that day. I can’t conceive of a greater loss than that… It’s impossible to think about the total absence of self. It’s all I’ve ever known (and damn if I haven’t learned A Lot about myself in the past couple years). The change that happens in my final second on Earth is a change I’ll never know.

But maybe other people will, and that’s what I mean by “it all cascades.” I think of a friend’s friend whom I wish I’d known better and his eagerness to say “Yes, Absolutely” to adventure, and how that shapes my own willingness to be bolder and wilder years later. I think of my grandmother when I pass yard sales or crave a late night bowl of ice cream to enjoy with a good book. I think of another friend every time it rains, and about a specific moment we shared, lying in an alley and letting the water soak us so that we could stand up and see our dry silhouettes for a few seconds before the storm faded them away.

I can only hope that, while I’m still here, I’m creating my own cascades. I am here right now. I have changed, I have lost, and yet I also have the power to transfigure at least some of those losses. I mean, even my name has changed since I put this book together. Maybe it’s good that it only exists here, where I can tell you directly that I’m Gordon now, and I was Gordon then, and Gordon made this book, even if the name on the cover says otherwise.

No one that I know will ever see my poetry book again, but you can see it here, hastily captured as it was, in the world’s smallest digital sketchbook library.

Please enjoy my Poems from April.

Death of an Imaginary Therapist

It started with a neon-bright, alien-themed Hawaiian shirt, impulsively ordered for a family trip right before the start of the pandemic. It was gaudy and flimsy and covered in vacationing extraterrestrials lounging in flamingo floats, so of course I had to have it. As resentful as I am about capitalism’s greedy, ad-targeting claws, I admit that I fell prey to them this time.

When the package finally arrived, I could barely stop myself from leaving work early to retrieve it from my front steps. I held out until the end of the day, however, before rushing home, releasing the Chihuahuas into the backyard to potty, ripping into the bag the shirt had been delivered in, and donning my, ahem, “gay apparel.”

I admired my reflection in the hall mirror. Winter-whitened skin, screen-strained eyes, and the tackiest shirt in all the land, and yet I felt so perfectly me and good in a way that I hadn’t for quite some time. I couldn’t control the parts of me that were causing increasing discomfort - my chest, my hips, my voice - but I could put on a bright, goofy shirt. Something that communicated some part of me that I hadn’t been communicating before, even if the communication was mostly to myself.

Of course, I say it started with the shirt, but really, this has been a conversation I’ve held with myself for most of my life. That conversation has been at times aggressive and self-eviscerating, at other times whispered, muzzled. I could say it really started with buying a binder for a drag show in college, or being mistaken for a boy in a Target as a preteen, or even insisting that “I’m not Abi, I’m HENRY!!” as a child. If this all sounds familiar, it’s probably because I wrote about these incidents in 2017, when I first published a piece on my genderqueer identity. Even that could be called a start, even though I’d been talking about wibbly-wobbly gender stuff for years before that essay.

But the shirt was something different. It was a step toward a new outward presentation, something I hadn’t allowed for myself outside of select scenarios. Everything about it was unapologetic. It was confidently ridiculous. It was masculine, but in a very unserious way. It was playful, bold, and silly, and it was me.

Oh dear, I thought as I surfed a wave of euphoria. This may require action. How inconvenient.

Months passed. Strange, lonely, stressful months, and I was one of the lucky folks who didn’t get sick, didn’t experience the pain and horror of a family member or close friend dying from a disease that we should have, as a society, been able to contain and mitigate. Even so, by November, I had scheduled my first voluntary therapy appointment.

I have severe depression and anxiety. I’ve talked quite a bit on this site about my experiences with those illnesses, and my fluctuating willingness to even admit I struggle with my mental health. The American healthcare system and the general societal stigma regarding mental illnesses have hindered my willingness to seek professional help, and even when I did, negative experiences with medication and dismissive doctors scared me off for a long time. Instead, I relied on an “imaginary therapist” - a nameless, faceless figment to whom I could rehearse what I would say to a real therapist. That was helpful for venting purposes, and sometimes helped me work through irrational thoughts in order to see my situation more clearly, but talking to myself could only take me so far.

I meditated. I changed my diet. I exercised, I cleaned (although it’s never been my strong suit), I forced myself to sit outside in the sun on the days I just wanted to hide in a puddle of blankets. I researched and practiced my mindfulness. I kept a gratitude journal. For a while, those things helped, too.

But day by day, and funky Hawaiian shirt by funky Hawaiian shirt, I realized there was an underlying issue that I wasn’t equipped to handle alone. After some false starts and scheduling issues, I finally met with a therapist, and, in addition to working on my standard array of struggles, I started talking about coming all the way out of the closet.

I am now four months on a low dosage of testosterone and am going by my middle name, Gordon (Go for short!). I no longer feel like I have to be “good” or “valuable” enough to ask for people to refer to me correctly. I no longer fret over ignorant people who insist I have no right to my pronouns. History and grammar are in fact on my side, after all.

And I’m aware that I’m not alone. The isolating (and traumatizing) environment of the pandemic has brought many people face to face with themselves as individuals, and that kind of introspection tends to result in discoveries and growth. With growth comes pain, but my pain has been MASSIVELY offset by new heights of joy and self-confidence.

With that in mind, clad in a shirt as loud and weird as I myself am, I have held an imaginary funeral for my imaginary therapist. This essay stands in as a eulogy for them. Without their presence, and the encouragement of my actual, non-fictitious friends, I may not have had the strength to seek a real therapist. And had I not done that, I may have delayed my coming out even further. I regret how long it’s taken me as it is. However, I’m relieved to finally be here, and I have renewed energy for the long trail that still stretches ahead of me.

Between the time I started writing this entry and now, I’ve learned that my actual, real, would-not-be-accepted-into-Foster’s-Home-for-Imaginary-Friends therapist put in her two weeks, and I’ve seen her for the last time without even knowing it. I gotta say… That threw off my groove a little. That said, I’m grateful for the months of work I’ve done with her, and because of that positive experience, I’m more willing to seek out assistance again. The system is imperfect, not every therapist is a good match, and obstacles like insurance and stigma still block the way sometimes, but I believe in the value of forging ahead regardless.

Farewell, imaginary therapist. Hello, new tools and refreshed hope.

And hello to the bigger, happier version of myself whom I’ve gotten to know quite a bit this past year. So many loved ones have welcomed this version of me into their lives, and I’m so grateful. I’m still evolving and still struggling from time to time, but I feel lighter as I go.

As Kurt Vonnegut would say: “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Hugs and Butterfly Kisses, Your Friend,

Go

Where We Go When We Go Nowhere

We’ve landed on a planet that’s completely engulfed in flame, and that’s a good thing. My more experienced space-adventurer friend, Luke, explains that this planet’s superheated fire storms make for perfect storm crystal hunting conditions. Those crystals sell for a lot of units at trading hubs, and I’ve had my eye on several ships to replace my starter vessel.

We wait for an alert to flash across our windshields: “WARNING. Wall of Flame Detected.” Then we take off into the ashy sky in our individual ships, our hulls creaking from the extreme heat of the atmosphere.

Even with our durable exosuits, we can’t last long outside of our ships during these storms. Once we spot the white, glowing crystals on the ground below, we land as close as we can, hop out, and jog through the thick, heat-wobbled air to collect our prizes as quickly as possible.

After the storm passes, we return to one of the few trading posts on this hell-world to exchange our treasures for universal currency. The landscape around the post is charred and unlivable, but on this little platform, members of the local sapient species bumble around, doing their own thing.

Here on planet Novil, that primary species is the Gek. I like the Gek. They’re short and reptilian and kinda cute, for being a bunch of arrogant plutocrats. I like them so much that I’m disguised as one of them. I look like a little yellow lizard in a green jumpsuit.

It me! The lizard of your dreams!

Luke, on the other hand, resembles neither the Gek nor the other two primary races in the galaxy. He’s taller than me and has a broad face with dish-like eye sockets and a crown of branching, antler-like appendages. He’s oddly pretty for being an alien mashup of the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke and a Furby. Technically, his disguise is more accurate to what we “really” are.

We are both “Travelers,” mysterious beings trying to piece together our own history, and that of the universe. A daunting task, but that’s just how this game goes. No Man’s Sky is massive in both content and concept. It’s a space exploration game with over 18 quintillion procedurally-generated planets to discover.

Just how big is that number? Large enough that it would take you almost 585 billion years to see each planet. So, large enough to be essentially infinite, and definitely large enough to occasionally swamp me with existential dread.

But I can handle a little dread, because I’m playing the game with my friends.

This is part of how I’ve been staying connected with people during the Year of Isolation. Usually, I hate phone calls. I feel uncomfortable and antsy even when chatting with my most beloved friends. I can’t focus on the conversation, and have trouble processing their words, no matter how clear the call is.

But for some reason, when I’m also zipping around in space, shooting asteroids to collect their precious resources, I can chat on a call for hours. Do I still get distracted and lose what I was saying? Oh yeah, definitely. But I get less anxious when that happens. It feels much more like a “normal” conversation with my loved ones. Like we’re all together, just hanging out. And also running from angry robots that want to laser us to death.

As we descend into what promises to be an even more isolating than usual winter, I’m increasingly aware of how vital it will be to keep this little ritual going. I’ve already chucked so many other rituals out the window. I lack the energy and focus for even my favorite activities, like writing. This was a rare November in which I didn’t attempt to reach 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, despite my love of the challenge. It was just too much pressure on my exhausted brain.

But video games? No pressure, just digital nincompoopery with my friends? That I can handle. Plus, I need that nincompoopery right now. So much is happening, and I’m overwhelmed and brimming with dread. This year has been so tightly packed with tragedy that it’s hard to hold a conversation that doesn’t circle back to the horror stew in which we all simmer.

So, having a conversation with my buddy Ryan about how the water mechanics work in Minecraft as he, Luke, Alé, and I burrow through cubes of stone in search of diamonds is a massive relief. For a few minutes, I can set aside the brain-scrambling anxiety and focus on karate-chopping giant spiders with my unicorn-themed avatar.

That’s not to say that we don’t hold serious conversations during our play sessions, though. We still chat about the heaviness of this year, and update each other on how our days went, and how we’re feeling. That question, that friendly “how are you doing?”, is sometimes very difficult to answer. In truth, even though I’ve been relatively fortunate this year and have worked hard on taking care of myself, I’m still struggling. Mental quirks that have previously been manageable are becoming disruptive in my work life and at home.

And so it was during one of those play sessions, as my space-lizard persona drifted through the void in their little red shuttle, that I decided to schedule my first voluntary, individual appointment with a therapist.

I’ve been wary of therapy for a variety of reasons. I’ve felt unworthy of it, or like I shouldn’t even bother unless I’m on the brink of a crisis, or that I’m “not allowed” to seek treatment unless I’ve completely exhausted all of my existing coping skills (how am I even supposed to measure that?). I’ve also had some poor therapist matches as a young person, and then as an adult during my bid to save a marriage that didn’t want to be saved. I feared I wasn’t emotionally ready to handle the potential discomfort or outright rejection that could come from a not-quite-right counseling relationship.

This year, the stakes are too high for those excuses. Even with video game playdates with my friends, and occasional, cautious meet-ups, it’s going to be an extra lonely season. When I have nowhere to go, I go inward, and that can be a dangerous and disorienting journey. You see, I start that journey with the intention of knowing myself more fully, so that I may better myself as a person. What tends to happen, however, is that I self-reflect to the point of bullying myself.

It’s a big, overwhelming universe out there. Now is not the time to rip apart the only vessel I have for exploring that universe.

Which is why I’m enlisting outside help.

If you’re feeling lonely and overwhelmed in your own metaphorical spaceship, I encourage you to do the same. Reach out, whether to professionals or to friends. Find new ways to connect to your loved ones. Don’t succumb to the feeling of stagnation. As lonely as you may feel, you aren’t alone. There’s a host of other travelers feeling much the same at the moment.

We can only do our best to make it through. In the meantime, I highly recommend the joys of building blocky Minecraft kingdoms with your friends. I promise it’s much more pleasant than staring at the wall and spiraling into an Extra Large Depression Pit. And if you find yourself spiraling anyway, here’s a link to a place that can help you match up with a therapist.

Good luck, everyone. Be safe, and much love!