Tag: travel

Lost Confidence

I’m actually going to go off topic with this one. Just a real quick note, I’ve been staying in Germany with Stefan again, just not as a patient this time. There’s a door on both the guest bedroom and bathroom this time! I’ve been here a little over a week now. I’ve been having seizures and Iji just isn’t strong enough to easily maneuver me if necessary, and Stefan’s wife is a nurse. So I’m here to have some tests until I at least have a cause and treatment plan, then I’m back home again. I’ve been here a couple of days now, and I’m ready to go home. My first appointment was a few days ago, they took a couple of blood samples and a plasma sample and that’s about all I know. After I that it’s an MRI, EEG… I can’t keep track anymore.

The point is I hate my body. I never used to. No matter how I feel about my father, my genes are good, I took care of myself, I’ve always felt pretty good. After July I put on about 15 kg pretty quick. The scars on my back already didn’t bother me too much, but now I have new ones. None of my clothes fit the same and they all look terrible. I found a few things that work, but not so much with the tube running across my face. I was almost starting to feel OK then I pulled that suit. It went straight in the fireplace, silk burns up quick. Isn’t it unfair that no matter how I try, I can’t see myself the way I used to?
I have managed to work off roughly 5kg with my leg and foot fully back in working order. Cardio is a challenge I’ll have to work on later, I just don’t think I have it in me right now. Iji and I had a routine of stretching together, and we’d walk to the store together once a week. I’m trying to keep the walking up while I’m here, and he was able to take a few days off to visit during my stay so we walked together, but I don’t know why I keep getting so damn stressed out walking out by myself. I used to run every damn morning and it was fine, I’d walk around the middle of the night just to relax but now I feel like I’ll drop out of my own skin when I’m off alone. Stefan’s wife goes out with me when she’s restless, but she’s a little over 6 months pregnant with twins and wears out as quickly as I do with my heart so we’re not good for motivating each other. It also serves as yet another unnecessary reminder of how badly I fucked up, yet I still don’t regret what I tried to do, only how

I started writing this about a week ago, but I haven’t been doing well and set it aside. The update since I started writing is that all of my tests have come up with exactly nothing so they’re focusing completely on the medication angle. Unfortunately, there aren’t many options they can try because their risks are too much with the damage already done to my heart…. Right, that part where I screwed up again. There was a time I thought I was intelligent. Now I come up with new reasons every day to feel like a moron, a failure, a coward, a pitiful excuse for the man I used to be and I really can’t figure out why. I know I shouldn’t hate myself, I know I didn’t cause what happened to me, but I do, and I did. It was my fault. I should have been guarded, I shouldn’t have had that bit of wine, I shouldn’t have turned my back, I shouldn’t have ever been with him in the first place …  Then I just feel guiltier because I’m better with Iji around, but that isn’t his responsibility. He deserves more than that… he deserves for me to be better on my own so I can be better for him.

He deserves so much better than someone that came a little too close to breaking a promise today. I nearly made myself a liar and I don’t even know what came over me. I haven’t got a clue what I was thinking, I just couldn’t handle anything. I had this moment where I felt so overwhelmed. I had taken a nap and I woke up, again, feeling hands on my neck and I was so overwhelmed and terrified of something I couldn’t fight … Stefan is an intuitive genius that suddenly started worrying about me, so he stepped away from a family event and got back to his house just before. Twice now he’s saved my life, I forgive him for it this time. As much as I’d like to pretend this time didn’t happen, here it is. I don’t even know if I’m brave enough to tell Iji myself. He deserves to know, he’s putting his trust and his faith in me and I’m just spitting all over it.

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.