Alone

I feel a little pathetic, but I want to go home. I don’t even know where that is now. Less than a year ago I would’ve said there’s nowhere outside of Marseille I belong. I loved it, my town was part of me and there was nowhere better. Not too long ago I went back to France to visit my sister, she was taking her daughter to the Musée du Louvre. I felt terrible from the moment I stepped off the plane. I love my sister and my niece, hell, I put my entire inheritance in my niece’s name the moment I found out the only thing my sister received was the house she was already living in with her husband and daughter. Of course, that was back when I wasn’t burning through all my savings on travel costs, home medical and fitness equipment, and replacing the majority of my wardrobe… but honestly, I’d have done it anyway. I just don’t love it here anymore. Even in Waldenbuch, I feel like I need to get away.

My proper address is in Japan now. Iji insists his house is our house and his bed is our bed. I love him, I love being with him, I’ve enjoyed his city… but I don’t fit with the culture. There’s a lot of nuance I’m still learning. Sometimes it makes me feel all the more isolated. I get teased for my accent all the time. It takes a long time for me to read basically anything, and I read things incorrectly on a regular basis. I feel great in the house, even at the office, but when I’m out in town it sometimes feels a little like I’m drowning.

It should feel like home right? I live there, my husband is there… and I do love him. I wasn’t supposed to, I tried not to, but I do. It makes me afraid. What if I’m misreading my own feelings. Maybe I just love the chance to be far away. Maybe I love that he loves me. I knew he did right from the start. He has for a long time. It started as a crush when he was a teenager. He was the only person I stayed in contact with for a very long time after Eli died. He was being raised to take over the sake shop. He came to visit me during one of my stays at home in France when he was 15, just nearly 16, I was living back at my dad’s place at the time. I say he came to visit me, but he was the adventurous one between him in his uncle (the guy that adopted him, don’t question it, it made sense to them) he wanted to experience the kinds of flavors other cultures like in their drinks. So he was going to stay at my dad’s place for a week with me to tour him around as his translator. Remember he’s 11 years younger than me, when he was 15 I was 26.

I was a bit dense, there were a few things I had never even considered. He had told his sister already, but I had no idea he’d had a crush on me. So 4th day he was in town I was up late with a movie and a few glasses of wine. He came out, said he couldn’t sleep and sat down to watch with me. I let him have maybe 60 ml of my wine, the legal age was still 16 at the time and his uncle had said it was fine. He had a bit once in a while at home. I should have paid more attention, I should have noticed my bottle emptied faster than it should have. I should have noticed all of it long before he worked up the nerve to try and kiss me. But I didn’t. I did shut him down immediately though. Of course my older brother had to be down when it happened, Theo had a good time with that for months. I didn’t even look at Iji again for a few years, barely spoke to him. I wasn’t mad at him, he was a kid and kid’s do dumb things. I just wondered what the hell I did that made it seem like a good idea, I felt awkward and irresponsible and didn’t want to cause any more bad decisions on his part… here I am married to him 7 years later. Sometimes I’m afraid he was the easy option, he wanted me and I didn’t need to do anything to make it happen.

I know it sounds stupid. There’s just so much I feel like I don’t know about myself now. My own hands are strangers to me, that isn’t me being dramatic. I’ve been baking for a long time, most of my life. So much that even with the disposable income I used to have there was near nothing I’d buy at the baker unless I was short on time. I stopped measuring years ago, you just start to know the feel. A few weeks ago I was making some bread for lunch sandwiches I didn’t have a clue how much flour I’d put in. Couldn’t even estimate, even when I lifted the bowl to feel it, I had no clue. It was like I’d just forgotten all that experience. If I can forget something I’ve done more thousands of times than I can count, isn’t it is possible I could also be entirely wrong about what I feel?

So here I am, feeling more isolated than I’ve ever felt before, and I may actually be afraid of the moment the doctors tell me I can go back.

Home

Let’s go from pathetic to weird. It was never the plan, but I fell in love with Ijiro. He’s kind patient, intelligent, and so many things I have respected him for already for a very long time. And I’d be lying if I said he didn’t grow into an attractive man. It didn’t help that a year prior his sister shamelessly told me about his drunken confession of a crush on me, which he admitted to being more later. So there I was, just months after I nearly lost my life twice circling around the idea of engaging in a relationship with a guy who’s diapers I used to change. You want to get really weird? I married him (He wound up asking me, if it makes a difference.)

And I feel guilty. I feel guilty because he’s so young, just 22. He’s barely dated, and I feel like I’m tying him down to someone broken that may never be fixed. I feel guilty because the last time I felt anything similar about someone was Eli. I feel guilty because he’s working on changing his own habits to fit around me.

He’s never locked his door in his life, I can’t sleep with it unlocked now. He got into our bed one night, he moved the blanket just wrong and I woke up and broke his wrist. I have terrible nightmares that wake him up constantly and I’m sure he’s probably terrified of trying to wake me out of it. Sometimes I just stop in the middle of a conversation, unable to breathe because I can feel Ralph’s hands on my neck, I hear him whispering to me. I was working down in Iji’s office below his bar one night; I went up to ask the manager a question and wound up trying to help a very drunk customer out to his cab. Before I got to him, he tripped and smacked his face right into the wall. When he turned around and I saw his broken nose… the blood on his face… I couldn’t tell you what happened until I was downstairs sitting in the micro-apartment (the room is just big enough for a single bed, a small table with a mini fridge under it, and a shelving unit with a few books and dried snacks.) with one of Iji’s friends holding my oxygen tank for me. I lost over 3 hours of my life because I saw a bloody nose. My life as a martial artist would be over even if I hadn’t fucked my heart. Iji worries about me forgiving myself, and he’s not wrong. I look in the mirror and see the scar on my forehead, and I hate myself. If his hand accidentally brushes over the scars on my back when he hugs me I completely freeze up. And the sex, either I’m on or I’m off, there’s no in between. He’s never pushed me in any way, and he’s only once expressed a need for less when I’m on.

I’ve always been a naturally highly energetic person, it’s part of why martial arts and fitness were great fields for me. My heart can’t handle it anymore. A particularly good round of sex leaves me basically immobile and attached to my tank for anywhere up to a half hour. For the most part I can handle that. My biggest energy burn used to be going on a 4km run every morning, 6km on the weekends. That’s not possible any more. I’m not physically capable of running 1km anymore. The less activity I have, the higher my stress levels go, the more often I have nightmares and other issues. It’s horrible. I hold myself back because I will not let our sex life be a symptom, but I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. And when I’m off… then I really don’t know what to do with myself and I feel like I’m going insane… and I just recently lost the funding that was letting me see a therapist. I actually really appreciated working with her and she was giving me time each week for both Iji and I. So, I guess it’s work in progress.

We have both been good for each other. Iji is terrible in the kitchen, before I came along most of his meals were ordered. I love cooking. When I was a kid I would go to the kitchen and hang out with the staff if I didn’t want dad to find me. He never thought of looking there and I learned a lot. He’s enjoyed all the meals I’ve made him and especially enjoys the pastries. I am French, we’re known for our pastries. He’s also been endlessly patient and encouraging. I’ve been feeling so helpless and so disgusting, and letting him touch me doesn’t make me sick. I can just hold him on the couch and let myself relax. He even let me turn the thermostat down when I realized I was having more nightmares in the heat, the trade-off is he gets to cuddle more to feed off my heat… oh no, how terrible… (sarcasm is hard enough in text format, I hope I convey in English.)

I’m sorry if this all seems quite strange, and I’m happy to clarify anything needed. I’ve just been having a lot of difficulty talking about all this, and have very few people to talk about it with, and thought a more anonymous environment might help. I honestly expected no one to read this and have been surprised to see people have. It’s not my intention to complain, or to scare anyone who might be in a similar situation. My father didn’t do much for teaching me to manage my emotions and I’ve been having some very unfamiliar emotions to tackle. He taught me how to handle a financial crisis, a business crisis, and a social-politics crisis, but not emotions. I still sometimes go hang out in a closet when I feel like I need to collect myself, that’s not something I like to admit. But I love Iji’s micro-apartment at the office… it’s very comfortable for me. Anyway, I think this has been enough of a rant for today. Most events, with the excepting of a few, I’ve covered are up to three months ago now so I can start with more recent times in my next post.

My Best Friend

Going to the United States may have been one of the worst things I could have done. My first year there was relatively uneventful. I was miserable through most of it. I went to a public school which didn’t seem as bad as it could be, but bad enough. The teacher for my literature class called on me for class reading every damn day and the other students frequently made fun of my accent like they’d never heard a French kid before. They were relentless, honestly I would have just stopped talking if it were an option. There was no point, these weren’t kids I could be friends with. I didn’t really hang out with many kids from the dojo either. A couple knew French, but being social wasn’t exactly something I was used to. I also spent as little time at my host families home as possible. My room was a glorified closet with only enough space for a roll out mattress and a desk, it wouldn’t be appropriate to make their son share a room. They also had a “no pets on the furniture” rule, which included me. The only chair meant for me was the one at the desk in my room. I wasn’t a member of the family so I wasn’t supposed to take meals with them either. I ate in my room.

Mostly I preferred talking with Hitoshi, I babysat for him as well. He had organized a private adoption from one of my father’s friends. The baby was meant to go to a close friend of Hitoshi’s, the uncle of one of his other students. Changing diapers and holding bottles didn’t require any communication skills. I met one of the most important people in my life. Elijah was a year older than me, he had transferred from the facility Hitoshi worked at before going on his own. He was born in Egypt but spent most of his childhood in India. I dated a few girls, in the sense that any 11 year old dates… The longest one was 3 weeks with almost no communication, I just wasn’t interested. I knew why, but if I accepted it I’d never be able to go home. I’d never be able to look at my father. I knew exactly what he thought of those “pathetic disgusting failures of men. ”

He and I spent a lot of time together. He was my best friend. I felt like going to school again, I started spending time with others at the dojo. I was a different kid. For a few years he made fun of me every time I told him about a date I had planned. Originally I had planned to go home after the first year, it had been so awful there. But with Hitoshi and Eli, I didn’t want to leave. I asked my dad if I could stay and he let me. For how much I wanted to leave I ended up staying until I was 18. The host family didn’t mind as long as my dad kept paying them and I spent most nights at the dojo anyway.

Everything I thought about myself changed when I was 15. I had known Eli for years at that point and we had been best friends. I’m surprised by how well I still remember. He had no shame. We were at the dojo after his for clean up, when we were about to leave he just looked at me at said “stop pretending and admit you want to fuck me” I was stunned stupid. I seriously had no idea what to say, but he wasn’t wrong. Obviously I couldn’t, I thought I couldn’t. But we ended up talking for a long time and it just… developed from there.

He was so patient with me, we did start dating but I wouldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t let one stupid relationship ruin who I was as a man. I couldn’t risk my dad finding out and being so disappointed in me. But we stayed together anyway, we even decided to get engaged. He moved to France with me, and everything was perfect. Everything except the part where he had leukemia. I was still touring competitions often enough my dad never even questioned us sharing an apartment, I needed someone to hold down the fort while I was away. But when he got worse I needed to settle down, I got myself a job as a personal trainer at a local gym. Things were looking good for him, good enough that he went home to visit his parents for a while, and he didn’t come back. He was surviving leukemia just to be hit by a car leaving a checkup at the hospital. I didn’t realize how much he changed me until I knew I’d never see him again. I hated myself for not leaving the states after a year like I planned. I hated my dad for letting me stay. I hated Hitoshi for not telling me I should go.

The worst part, I didn’t even go to his funeral. I tried. I saw my dad’s car there … I don’t know why he was there but it would only take one look at me to know why I was. If I couldn’t have Eli I couldn’t lose my family to. So I sat in my car and cried. I was too pathetic to take my last chance to ever see his face because I didn’t want to disappoint dad. I sat in my car and cried, then I drove away. Dad would have hated me if he saw me there I know, he would have seen the son “it was too easy being proud of” cry, he would have known I’d been with a man… he would’ve know there was nothing about me he could love.