Starting at eight years old I was assaulted by a neighbor. It only stopped when we moved away. During this same era I found out my father was my adopted father, and I realized I was attracted to girls. Lost, fragmented, shamed in triplicate.

It was the 1980s. Sure there were kids like me, but their dads usually just vanished, they didn’t feel the need to make it legal and binding. And sure, there were queer kids like me, but we were all at home in our closets, told AIDS would get all the gays like a boogeyman.

I seemed to like boys too, but even back then I wondered if that was learned or genuine. As a married mother of two, I answered that question when I was in my forties. What I did know was that I dated guys when I didn’t want to, and didn’t date girls when I did. I did things I didn’t want to, all to be perceived in a way that I didn’t really want either. I felt it didn’t much matter since I didn’t think it was any different than it ever had been.

At nineteen, I was raped. I never admitted what actually happened. Even to myself. This past summer, as I explained the experience to my husband, he explained back to me I was raped. I had always told myself it was just bad sex, that was how it was sometimes.

Just, bad.

Everything I thought was solid ground always proved to be ice, melting to water, flowing away from me. I have been scared to acknowledge countless true things about me. What would the truth turn me into? This is the manner in which I lived. Unexamined, ephemeral, brittle.

I had people in my life– and still do— who care for me; I have never been alone, but the message I received was that at any moment I might be because I deserved to be. I never dared to make waves or give anyone a reason to leave, why hasten such hurt?

It was a fragile time in my life and because I confronted nothing, in many ways it never stopped. I thought I didn’t know anyone who was queer. I wanted to recognize something of myself in another. I wanted someone to tell me I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t until this last spring that I put down my shame and felt comfortable enough to admit to my own variations, to come out fully, to own it.

It being me.

When I did come out, an important person in my life, a person who has known me for eras and ages told me they were like me. How could they have waited on me to give them the safety to say something?

And then understanding landed… Of course they needed someone like me to say anything. They still aren’t out. They still live in the very world I have been trying to leave. We are all looking to each other, waiting for someone to lead the damn way.

Scared. Just trying. So human.

I realized I had done much of the same to the children in my life, not letting them know me, and maybe themselves. I refuse to hide anymore. I am sad I ever did. I am sad anyone ever has.

I don’t always feel I’m supposed to be doing this. I will continue to be a bit of a doubting Thomas about being alive. I think what I am expected to do is call this chaos a midlife crisis and feel as if there is nothing to be reckoned with inside me. Just lay back. Shut up. Take it. Blame my age and let time plant this madness in me– become whatever is left after these moments pass without my say. But that is too close to all I have ever done.

I want something different now.

What is happening to me is a reaction of my inner world to the outer world. I have spent too much time trying to hide and exist at once. I might be out there for a tick, but mostly I am tucked away. Embarrassed of my heartbeat, my lungs, my blinking eyes. Trying so hard to slip by rather than make anything happen, rather than being seen. When all I want is to be seen, to make…

A gentle soul told me, what I am experiencing is the asking of a very real question: “If I died today, is this what I would want my life to look like, and if not what am I going to do about it?”  I think the answer is to live with some courage.

I have been hurt in some pretty horrible ways but I am still here, still believing in people, still believing in love. That is what I am choosing to spend the rest of my days thinking about. I have always been a curious person, but I’ve done little with it, now I want to try a relaxed, easeful curiosity.

So, for starters, I shall stop being vague, for changes are coming and I should explain why. 

I am adding a paywall to my Substack.

Essays about my writing will always be free. I will be changing the cadence of my posts, writing regularly, but more when inspired rather than because tomorrow is Wednesday. If I have nothing to say one week, I shall stay silent until I do. 

I have been working. I have stopped saying I am going to write and I got quiet and got to work. I already have plenty to report back. Fear not, dear birds, there will continue to be messages dropped from the Mast. Break time is over.

My intentions when I started here were to write about writing, and then I got sidetracked; or the story kept unfolding…but now that I have a plan I can better speak to what I am devising. How someone writes– the work of the craft is interesting to me and that is something I will always share freely. Literally. 

However, this new world of mine is a bit more private than I have ever discussed here, and it is not only my world, and people will invariably have opinions they feel they can share. The privacy and consent of me and my people are things I care deeply about. Paramount things. Nonstarter type things. I know that is not true for everyone, especially on this sticky web, spiders being as they are: I wish to keep people only here for fodder malnourished, and the lurkers at bay. (Nothing against spiders, but we have all seen how they eat.) Really, I am asking for grace and I don’t know how else to do that on the internet. After my explanation below all such writing will be paywalled. I hope you understand. 

What’s the quote, “love and a cough, even a small cough1…”?  As I have settled into my own I have noticed a few feathers, maybe ruffled some. I caught a tiny cough... I didn't want to make a big deal of it. I was the only one with a tickle in their throat— it was all but imaginary, but my mind did wander; that was real. I vanished into my head and I debated everything. What was autonomy? When should I share a thought? When must I? When is a thought more than a thought? I pondered what defined fidelity? Thoughts, words, intentions? I tried to stop coughing, but at some point my husband noticed. I guilted away my alighted breath and lied about everything and anything.

I wanted my marriage, but I became obsessive about my sovereignty. I imagined the two notions as distinct, divided realms. I wanted to be his wife and I wanted to have my thoughts, my world. I declared I could not do both, my agency had been taken from me at age eight and that I had never taken it back. I didn’t know what was mine anymore and I blamed everyone but myself for the mess and distress. I felt I had been mocked for my life, my gender, my sexuality. I claimed I submitted to the assigned roles and relationships prescribed by everyone and anything that ever came before me. I acted like this loving man who had endlessly supported me was suddenly the keeper of my self; like he was stopping me from living my life. That was not true, that was not real. I had tangled everything.

I wanted to pause living and re-choose the pieces of my life.
I actually told my husband this.
I cannot imagine how that must have felt to hear.

I had never been more angry, vengeful. Grudge-y. I became insufferable. I power tripped. I corrupted myself with my oldest angers and refused to hear from anyone other than myself for months and months. This was more than a broken interpretation to my world. This was me breaking. I could not go on the way I had and I was flailing about what that meant. What that would mean…

I told my love the person he had created a life with was drowned; I told him this new person standing before him drowned her. I had no remorse. I could only see that I wasn’t powerless and I ran away with the idea I could change something, that change wasn’t something that only happened to me.

He looked at me terrified and told me I made everything different for us, and that I did it alone— and he was right.
He was gutted.

We both feared our marriage was over. We could not find a way to move forward without one of us feeling broken. I would not give up an inch, and he wasn’t sure who he was suddenly married to. We talked about separation, and divorce lawyers. Asked “what about the kids, the dogs?” Rings were removed, yet replaced to where they rest in peace.

Our lives were in sheared ruins, but still we wanted to stay together. It was bad, but it was still us. Somehow, we were still endlessly committed. By all accounts, if we wanted to divorce we had reached the point where it would be understood. We tried everything.

Almost. 

It wasn’t until we both dared to ask questions we didn’t think we should, until we dared to give answers we didn’t think we could that we started to get anywhere new, anywhere we might rebuild. 

We surprise even ourselves.

My husband and I have decided that monogamy is not the most important part of our marriage, or the only way we can love each other. Honesty is. We could put labels on it, but mostly I am tired of trying to fit in. I am tired of doing as expected. It’s partly why I use queer rather than bi. I don’t want everyone to put their expectations on me. I refuse to justify my heart. I just want to feel it. I know after all this time and pain I love deeply, widely. I think it is brave of us and beautiful, and dare I say, human. I don’t really want to deny it. Sit with me, maybe we could label me if I might share my heart with you, but I will never justify it again.

I love the way I am entangled with my husband. I love him and I desire him. We have a deep security of a lived and loved life. I choose him everyday. I literally choose to live my whole life with him, daily. I am more fulfilled by him now than ever. He sees me and chooses me. There is no lacking here. He is not why I feel the need to be ‘out there’, he is why it is possible for me to go, and then return. He is offering me space to be my whole self.

We are so much more than each other’s.

The constant fragmentation and denying of myself shrunk my life. I am curious of who I might be. I just had to stop breaking myself into pieces and hold my one true shape. Having such agency over all of my choices makes me feel like I am in control of my life, that it is not too late to be something more than I made myself when trying to be ‘right’. I do not have to let others’ expectations lead me, rather I can lead myself. I am sovereign, but I am not alone. I want that, I need that.

I had become so self righteous, I let every hurt and my desire to take back anything I thought had been stolen from me lead me. I stopped considering others. I stopped properly communicating. I think I thought everyone would just be willing participants in my pity-party no matter what it looked like, and truly, no one was. It taught me a lot about myself and the world. None of it was an easy lesson. It never is. You have to be real. You have to let people in, let yourself out. Past pains do not guarantee future ones.

We have talked-and-talked-and-talked; as best as we can, we know what we are doing. I did not bring this to us the right way, but we have an understanding now, an attunement— a harmony, an honesty we didn’t have before. I suspect as we endeavor this life very few things will go as expected but I do know that I am just now capable of living a life I always needed but was always fearful of: The one where I say what I want.

I feel compelled to share a quote; humor me. I have hinted at and blatantly mentioned this book several times now: It might be required reading for the Mast at this point. Miranda July’s All Fours is goosebumps across my mind, tiny pieces of myself I didn’t know existed rising up at once. A book so radical that when I told a dearest friend I had bought a copy for my husband— she almost choked on her poblano.

Why would I offer up a book that shows how a woman cheated on her husband and blew up her life as a means of communicating my needs?!

FAIR— that is a valid ask.

Well— because July found a way to explain what I aim to say with all my muddled words and I am relying on her to continue the hard work:

“The only dangerous lie was one that asked me to compress myself down into a single convenient entity that one person could understand. I was a kaleidoscope, each glittering piece of glass changing as I turned.”

My kaleidoscope turned. Things look different now. I have always worried about being an inconvenience, I never considered I didn’t really want to be convenient either. Life has been complicated and muddy, but I was always kicking up dirt to hide in. I walk slow and deliberately now. I am considering all who need to see. Including me.

I can see such shiny fragments. It is the world that glitters. And so do I.
I am not who I was.

The problem wasn’t my desire, it was the hiding, the leaving me and him out of my inner world— when that is all that ever matters. I told more than one dangerous lie. I told a whole life of them. At one point my husband told me he would rather I had just cheated and been honest about that instead of not cheating and all the lying.

Fuck. The weight of the hurt there… when you wish for any other pain than the one you must endure. As much as I wanted to know myself, he also wanted to know me. What have I been doing all this time? No one has ever known me.

I was always searching for how I feel now, and it wasn’t the world holding me back or anyone else, it was me. I was stopping myself from being me. Each lie buried me more.

This is not a solution to our hurt: zero parts of this have been easy. We came to this decision by being unabashedly honest, by risking everything. It was heartbreaking, but we were already there. I wish we came to this same solution some other way.

That heartache is its own tangle of knotted roots. We are learning to garden, to be patient and see what can grow from all we ever sowed, from all I watered, we are finding all the ways we must shift now.

We dig.

With it all the things we crammed into ourselves, never having expected to turn all this out, to explain our contents— to display artifacts, not show artifice. It is hard but the conversations I am having now make everything else I have ever said feel like small talk. My life is suddenly in color, I am in Oz. There was such a storm. I didn’t know where I was going, where we would land. I took my whole house with me, but now…

We have known each other for 30 years, been together just shy of 25 years, married 22. We are not new or unknown to each other, but I feel new and unknown to me and he understands that. He saw me arrive, wild and quaking; and he stayed. After all this time fearing people would go, he stayed. He saw me, through my stories and defensives, past the lies, past my fear and asked me what I needed. I answered him through the armory of myself and saw all those things aren’t actually a part of me.

So, we are daring to find out if it is possible to run, to be our own, and to still have a place in this world where we are accepted and loved as the wholest people we can become.

It is a risk, we see that. There are countless things to say about this, to feel about this. To write about.

Even we are scared, but it is about reaching for a different kind of security, a different kind of life. I am more vigilant about my love and care now, about my attention. I am more discerning. It’s harder to take my husband, my life for granted living this way.
Good.

I just want to be authentic, even when I won’t fit in. It is about making a life we want to say we lived. It is about becoming all of myself before I die. We are willing to say the way that has been suggested to us isn’t working and we are venturing to find another way. We are deviating, even if that makes us deviants. I am tired of love being restricted, especially in these hate-preached days. Let something new exist. I am going to try and make it.

This is what my memoir is about: the saying of the things. Trying to be real, to come alive this late in life, to be accountable for myself. I understood my choices were to either lie forever or get bold enough to figure out what I really want my world to look like, and then to dare to live it, even if I think no one will understand. (Even though so far someone always seems to understand.)

That’s also why I’m writing about it here. We need each other’s stories and we need to see others doing what we may be silencing within ourselves. Too often we think we can’t, and very often we can. And since I’m trying to write about becoming/ being myself: this is that.

I told you all at one point, I wonder what would change more: the book or me… I think we’re getting our answers.

Don’t get too excited. I will not be writing anything indecorous. This is a place where I put my thoughts, not my deeds. I am just letting you know there will be some new topics. (Plus, I do have some ideas for some special extras that will be exclusive for paid subscribers.) The Mast has been a bit mopey, I hope to add something different here and there, dare I say– joy. 

If you were ever here to support me, now is one of those times. You are needed. If you are here for my writing, please stay exactly where you are, I shall not smudge your inbox with my delicate ways. In my next post you’ll see what I mean. I explain how I am restructuring my book, the big lie I put in my first draft and why I had to remove it if I was to keep writing. The full story will be told out of the fine weather, down in the guts of this wee ship.

Be curious.
Come to me.

If this is very much so not your thing, this intermission might be a time to leave. You don’t have to tell me you are going, that’s why there are buttons for you to click rather than levers for me to pull. But, for the sake of my heart and everyone on the outskirts (which I believe is all of us one way or another) I want to say: people will feel like they can better be themselves if we stop punishing them when they do so. 

The Mast is still the Mast. Thing is, I am an undaunted me now. If you think you might be an unflinching you— please upgrade your subscription. 

There’s much to say.

All Fours, by Miranda July

Miranda’s Substack an actual All Fours Group Chat exists and it’s better than I imagined.