i am beyond confused, and a tad pissed off.

the semester just ended on friday, and i had a million plans for the weekend — oodles of reading (work-related) and massive house cleaning and good grief, i had a huge list. but my body and spirit rebelled, stopping me in my tracks and getting me to just sit and be still for most of the weekend. i am glad i did — it had been a long time since i could do that and not feel guilty because i was blowing things off to do it. i had truly open time to just hang out — watch birds in our backyard, actually pay full attention to some movies i’ve been wanting to watch, reading for pleasure…

energizing, this time off. i must remember this. (-;

i am behind on my running and cycling schedule — i let the frantic pace of the last three weeks of the semester get me off track. this taught me a valuable lesson: i really need to find ways to make sure i do not sacrifice my exercise and mediation routines when work gets crazy. i do it too easily, and it never really pays off. so that will be a priority this summer, learning to not do that — because in a couple of weeks, summer gets terribly busy for me, so i need to be strong in my boundaries there.

i’ve signed up for a workshop on folklore (may 18-20) — how to do research into a community’s practices and to then write about them. this fits into a big writing project i have strewing around in the back of my head — part academic, part creative non-fiction, part poetry, part… well, it’s a lovely mish-mash in my head right now. i have spent a lot of breath talking about how i don’t want to be a traditional academic so i can write outside those boxes — time to shit or get off the pot, as my grampa used to say.

i missed the last intro to mediation workshop, so i have contacted to teacher to see when the next one is. if it doesn’t conflict with my folklore workshop, i will do that this month.

an interesting observation… as i am feeling more cleansed emotionally, i find myself doing little things around our house to clean it. stuff i haven’t done since we moved in — not the basic dusting and sweeping, but stuff like oiling the wooden shelves in the kitchen, or wiping down dusty walls, or washing the rugs and sweeping the floor in our washer and dryer room. i’ve gotten rid of a million books and cds, donated clothes i don’t wear or don’t feel cute in, worked in the yard with my beloved to get it in shape… i’m paying attention to what’s growing in  the yard again, both what we’ve planted and what has planted itself, and thinking about what to let stick around and what has to go for this space to be accessible and soothing to the eye…

i’m feeling engaged, productive, energetic, and gently focused. so far, it seems, so good. (-;

Looking at the Black folks in the room she asked, “How do you know you’re Black?”

Everyone shouted out something, something different. “I earn less than most people.” “I get followed in Target.” “Are you kidding? Listen to how I talk!” (Laughter followed this last comment – the Blacks laughed, most whites did not.)

The chaos of the talk went on for several minutes; the Rev. simply listened and let it run its course.

When people settled again, she turned to her white listeners: “How do you know you’re white?”

The silence was deafening. A few uncomfortable chuckles tried to fill the space, but failed.

“Exactly,” she said, looking hard at everyone. She let the silence sink in for a few more moments and then asked, “Now, my friends of color – how do YOU know they’re white?”

The chaos of responses once again overwhelmed the room.  In the midst of all that talk, for the first time in my life, I knew what color I was.

**********************

In my late teens and early 20s, I was Kristen, posting family pics in my dorm room, sweet soft score filling the background of my life. Believing in peace – in “having fun despite our differences”.  We are more alike than different; I don’t see color, I see people; “everybody get together gotta love one another right now.”

In my 40s, I write this:

The ABCs of White Guilt

A

Bountiful

Country

Defending

Everyone…

ABCDE… [sing]

FUCK.

No.

That myth crashes under the weight of the

GUILT. Whites have guilt

Hangovers from partaking of too much juice from “our” progress

Progress mapped by the scars on

Individual backs of color, energized by

Jingoism and

Kommon Kulture Klubs (and I’m not talking Boy George here).

So we compose

Liberal

Mantras that we

Narrate and

OHM [sing, with meditative finger gestures] over the airwaves of

PBS (not FOX News, of course, but the Privilege Broadcasting System),

Quelling our queasiness about

Racial strife with

Sesame Street songs (Sunny days, chasing the clouds away…),

And lessons about smiling and being nice and hugging and accepting everyone for

who.

they.

are.

Good lessons in

Theory,

But that blind us to color

and difference

and the power that we don’t even feel but wear everyday

in

our

skin.

Skin, that just by being pale,

Undermines the struggles of the

Victims of

White privilege and

Xenophonbia, and that allows

Your white neighbors to

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

In peace

While you [pause]

Fight.

**********************

If Professor Phipps asked me “What are you?”, I wouldn’t know how to answer either. I am a queer woman, Hungarian is the ethnic background I ID most with – but aside from some good, comforting food, I’m not sure what that really means.

I am a from a blue collar background, not some WASP, so I feel I am less removed from the struggles of my friends of color – my  grandparents were hated, pushed into neighborhoods away from the more refined Western Europeans. They did it all themselves – by the power of our own bootstraps family ethos, for sure. So I know what it’s like to not be of the privileged class, right?

But that’s actually BS.

I am white. And that is all that matters. When I walk into a room, no one hides purses or moves, ever so slightly, away from me. No one follows me around in Target, watching where my hands go. I don’t get pulled aside for those extra careful searches at the airport.

And neither does my partner when he’s with me. But he does get searched when he travels alone.

We joke about me being his passport. Safe, white, femme female-bodied person. So easy to trust, so easy to know.

So white.

**********************

I write to make sense of myself in/and the world. I write to discover that I really do have thoughts to share. I write to show my students I care and am willing to do what I ask them to. I write because I wish I were a better writer and maybe by writing more I’ll get there. I write to honor all the amazing writers I admire, choosing their medium as my own. I write because words are simply freaking cool. I write because my brother does, and does it well, and he inspires and shames me to use what talent I do have this way. I write because I believe we all need to be public with our voices or the world will just go to hell. I write because I hope someone will read my words and validate who I am. I write because I am a writing teacher – who teaches it if they don’t do it? I write when my mind and soul hurt and I need to let the universe know. I write to lessen that hurt. I write to find beauty. I write to remind myself of my own sanity when the world feels/makes me feel crazy. I write to tame my demons and encourage my angels. I write to share my love with my partner, friends, and family. I write when I want my beloveds to know who I am. I write despite the privilege inherent in having that kind of time for reflection. I write to use my powers for good. I write to feel alive, like a cut on the skin, hot red blood cold shivery in the clean air, open and raw and vulnerable and dangerous. I write because it feels like spitting into the wind, and my words spray back on me but also get diffused into the world and maybe, just maybe, someone else will be emboldened by them to come into their own voice.

I write as though what I think and feel matters in/to the evolution of the universe.

i wasn’t going to write about bash for some of the same kinds of reasons. he’s gone from our family, and going on about it isn’t going to change that. it just is what it is.

we had to get rid of bash because he had gotten erratically violent. he would attack his puppy-housemates sometimes for seemingly no reason, other times because he felt some resource of his was being threatened. like food — he felt he owned all three bowls, and so would attack the other 2 dogs if he felt he didn’t get to own them all. sigh.

or when i was brushing him, and another dog was within three feet of him. then there were all the times we couldn’t figure out what triggered him — if we could figure the trigger out, we could take steps to minimize or eliminate it. but if we couldn’t, well, yeah.

he was getting more vicious in his attacks, and would even redirect his attack to boi and i when we tried to break it up. last straw was him landing max in the doggie ER with major puncture wounds on his front left leg. max could’ve lost use of his leg.

max is ok, healing like Wolverine, hating is conehead life right now. but what bash did to him was too much. max and sammy were always afraid of him, skulking about the house, trying to avoid him — and boi and i had become afraid of him, too, uneasy around him and always on guard to stop things before they happened, whatever they would be.

this is no way to live.

giving him up was one of the most painful things i have ever done. i couldn’t even speak coherently to the poor intake associate at the Humane Society. but she listened, deeply, when i told her both what he was doing, and with whom and in what kind of home bash might be able to be ok. i didn’t feel she judged me, and she really took to sebastian, who can be charming and adorable.

if he hasn’t tried to eat his kennel mates or gone after the HS workers, they will keep him and try to train him and see if he can get placed. if not, well…

he’s gone, either way. it hurts, but there is also a huge sense of relief. all 4 of us are more relaxed than we’ve been in a long while. i hope it ends up being best for him, at least eventually, too. the decision needed to be made, but i don’t have to like it. i will always wonder if there was more i could have done. i will always love him. i will always remember the sweet times with him. i will always miss his face.

Obviously, my 3.1 readers say – you have not exactly been blogging everyday.

What has held me up the last few days? Why am I behind in my NaNoWriMo daily quota/promise to myself and my beloved readership?

I teach – you all know this. I teach face-to-face, in a bricks and mortar set up at the University of Arizona, and I teach online to younger kiddies – junior and senior high school mostly – through a program at Johns Hopkins University. So, this fall, I have a total of 27 + 19 + 9 = 55 precious young minds and writerly souls I am responsible for guiding along the path to fruitful self-expression and applicable academic skills development.

There are many deadlines and requirements for responding and fussing over mundane details like tracking attendance and emailing students who don’t submit required and important exercises and assignments on time and answering emails that are cute because the student is actually engaging intelligently with the work and wanting to talk in more detail than the course requires about her writing process and the ideas she has for her next essay…

I get a bit caught up in it all. Both the crappy parts – like acting like a cop, policing late or recalcitrant or otherwise disengaged and at-risk students – and the good parts – like answering the enthusiastic student emails and having real conversations about what this student learned from our last unit and what that student wants to do for his major – and I totally live for and so draw out and sacrifice a lot of my own stuff to experience all that good energy and exploration and growth and relating to real people stuff that makes my FRIGGIN JOBS WORTH the shitty pay and unrealistic commitment of time.

Yeah, hmm. So that’s my excuse. I’m busy nurturing young minds and souls, dammit.

The irony is not lost on me here. I nurture these other minds and souls, encouraging them to take time to find their voices and express themselves…. And do it by sacrificing the time and energy I need to do the same for myself.

My relationships with my students – when they’re good – do some of that for me. They are an outlet for creativity and expression, and they challenge me as a human to be more open and flexible in how I live and think about the world an how I classify and judge my fellows 2-footeds on this planet. So it’s cool that I allocate time and energy to Teach Well. I love it, it makes me feel alive, and it is Good Work, both for me and the world.

Excellent. BUT… This is all still no reason why I should not be putting my foot down on the time suck that is my teaching life and just write.

It is sel I almost wrote that it is selfish. How revealing. Time to write is time not working, so it is selfish. No wonder it is so easy for me to NOT write. I don’t value it like I do all this teaching stuff, even the hideously mundane and annoying crappola that comes with the exciting and energizing relationship parts of working on writing with students.

Hmm, another revealing turn of phrase: “working on writing with students.” Do I really? I do work with students, and we focus on their writing, definitely. But I don’t work on writing with students – they are the writers, and I work with them. I am not a writer working on writing with other young writers. We do not write together. I do not work on writing with anyone – I write alone, if I do, and then I go teach it to other people.

Ok, so maybe I’m pushing it as far as parsing the implications of my wording there, but I think you get the idea. It all gets back to me not being a writer, not going through what I ask my students to do – and thinking that this is ok.

It isn’t. My writing is a vital part of me as a teacher. If I don’t experience it, how can I guide others through the difficult and often crazy process that is the composing of a text? I f I don’t do this thing that is hard and challenges me and – even if I suck at it, which I suspect I do – what kind of a teacher can I be? Because I am denying myself the same things I encourage in and for my students: free time to play, the permission to play, the belief in the value of play and self-expression… The insistence that moodling around in words and ideas is a worthy expenditure of time and energy, and not a waste, not a selfish act at all.

It’s not just about teaching, either. I am less of a partner and a sister and a daughter and a friend if I am not living as I need to. I may classify it as selfish, to take time away from these people to “just” sit here and write, but it is not. Right? I want to ask – still not sure of my own answer and feelings about this. Silly – because I do all I can to encourage those I love to do their own things – write, play guitar, take pictures, whatever it is that they love, whatever they love to do to play – and I insist that they deserve this time and that it will make them better people and thus better partners, siblings, children, friends…

Teacher, teach thyself.

Seriously. I should put that on my mirror, so I see it everyday.

I could get all caught up in how my little line graph thingy on my NaNoWriMo page tells me I won’t meet the 50,000 word goal for the month until the end of Jnauary. And I could then try to dissipate that stress by declaring loudly how busy I am with Important Things like my teaching obligations.

Or I could just shut the eff up and write. And know I am happy if I write every day, and not that I meet that word goal. I wrote a poem draft today, and did this blog – a bit self-indulgent, to be sure, but it is a good pep talk and what the hell? I want this month to challenge me to get back into a writing habit (or just “get into” – not sure I was ever IN a steady writing habit before) – and learning to quash the shit that gets in the way of that.

I have lost a sense of purpose for my work – a conviction that what I am doing matters.

I teach the same stuff over and over:

Yes, you need to have a point you can articulate to make your essay effective — it’s called a thesis.

No, you can’t just tell me that you loved the movie – you need to analyze how it works, how it made you love it.

If you make a statement about how that song gets a message across to its readers, it helps to have evidence from the song to back yourself up. Quote lyrics!

Yes, you can break grammar rules, but an academic essay peppered with fragments, run-ons and misspellings isn’t likely to win you any points.  Break the rules on purpose and for a specific effect! Not because you didn’t know the rules.

It gets old.

Especially since I no longer believe that… hmm, let me just be blunt: I don’t believe in the academic essay anymore. Not one bit.

Yup, I said it. Out loud.

I am a teacher in academia, working in a course sequence that has as one of its goals the preparation of students for the writing they will do throughout college, and I do not believe that the kinds of essays we teach are useful.

That said, I do still believe in everything I listed above – writing is about communicating, and it really does help if you know how your readers will react to sentence fragments and if they produce a cool rhythm in your prose or are just annoying, it is important to have some sense of purpose for your pieces, being able to really look at something and talk about how it works is cool and keeps you from being taken in by the oodles of silly shit out there on the Internet, and being able to back up the things you say if you’re arguing something is pretty key to your ideas being entertained at all by anyone.

The problem is, is that the “academic essay” is completely lacking in context. It is a sterile exercise in purposeless analysis. And no one writes this kind of thing anywhere else but in undergraduate coursework.

Because this kind of essay is used by instructors across the disciplines as away to get students to prove they know things – that they’ve read the chapters assigned with some sort of critical attention, that they memorized the facts and dates and theories and can do some minimal assessment of them, that kind of thing – I feel obligated to make sure my students can do this kind of writing. And I have seen students’ abilities to do basic textual analysis get weaker over the years. Blame it on underpaid and overburdened high school teachers, blame it on having to teach for tests like AIMS, blame it on the Internet or texting or whatever (which I don’t frankly buy into) – but the lack of preparation in this arena is real and definitely more profound that it was when I first began teaching.

Anyhow… So I feel obligated to “get down to basics” or something and teach basic analysis and expression of said analysis. Not quite the 5-paragraph essay deal, but it’s feeling more and more like just that with every class period I spend focused on thesis statements and body paragraphs that have claims and evidence and explanation and that tie back to said thesis statement.

I have watched my teaching move to focus more and more on these aspects of writing and less on writing as communication, as expression of a self, as playful exploration of ideas and experiences. All because I have felt guilty about wasting valuable class time on that kind of thing – those more intangible aspects of writing – when my students so very much need practice with academic essays to survive college.

In so doing, I’ve killed the joy in teaching I once had, because frankly, teaching like this is boring. Like I said before, it’s writing that is almost totally removed from reality (except for the “survive school” reality), and so lacks passion and engagement for any one – students, me…

In a moment of beautiful synchronicity, an article was passé don to me by a colleague: “Language, Power, and Consciousness: A Writing Experiment at the University of Toronto” by Guy Allen. Allen describes a curriculum he developed, a bit by accident, while teaching a course called “Effective Writing.” There is a lot to his article, of course, but it boils down to this: he discovered that by teaching personal essays he improved his students’ abilities to write effective expository essays. Direct teaching of expository essays did not improve those abilities.

Let me reiterate: direct instruction in expository writing skills didn’t improve students’ expository writing abilities, but teaching them personal essays did.

Well, COOL.

This guy ended up teaching an intense regimen of personal narratives, combined with direct work on craft (exercises in eliminating wordiness and clichés from writing; how to replace passives and forms of “to be” with active, concrete verbs; being detailed instead of vague; building strong, parallel phrases, sentences, and paragraphs – that kind of thing). Students applied the craft exercises to their personal narratives, revising them throughout the course. All of this was driven by a focus on communicating – these stories were shared with others, and so demanded that the authors have a clear goal for their work, and that they utilize the craft skills to get it across.

They got it. They wrote and revised and were passionate about what they were writing because it was their lives and ideas and experiences being communicated to real people. They could get distance on their writing and analyze it and the experiences they were trying to convey because they cared that readers get what they wanted to say – so they were invested in the entire revision process.  They didn’t just tell stories – they crafted them, imbuing them with energy and purpose and the power to actually reach and touch readers.

These skills then carried over to all their other writing, even the “academic essays” they had to write in some classes.

There is a lot Allen had to say about why this worked – the power of narrative to engage us and help us think more deeply about everything and help us make the world make sense… About the power of treating students as writers and working to improve them as writers – rather than improving their writing… And I will write about that in detail in a future post. But right now, I just want to say how FREE I suddenly feel. Freed from this life-sucking teaching focus that I’ve fallen into over the last few years. Freed from the guilt that if I teach something aside from basic academic writing (whatever, really, that is), I will be failing my students.

I want my students to feel they have something to say, that they are writers, that they can convey ideas effectively to readers, and that writing is so very much more than regurgitating course content or proving mastery of grammatical conventions for a grade.

If I can teach them that, I will have done something real in the world, I believe.

And wow. People say this kind of shit out loud? On purpose?

And then there’s the little boy who went as Daphne from Scooby Doo for Halloween, and some of the mothers at his Christian preschool came up to him and his mom flipping out about it and worrying about how his choice of costume would make him gay. Read her blog post here. These women felt it was ok to come up to a 5 year old and his mother in public and say whatever they wanted to about how damaging his choice was.

He is 5. It is a COSTUME.

And that dude from Arkansas — I don’t even know where to begin with that. I don’t think I will. Takei is right — he is and ever will be a douche-bag.

I am not sure what to say here. More than anything, I am dumbstruck by this kind of thing. That people can say things like this about others and mean it. Feel justified in saying it. Believe it. Are supported by others who also believe it.

I simply don’t get it. How can you hate someone so much simply because of who they choose to love? How can you judge someone by the Halloween costume they choose to wear? People really believe that allowing a 5 year old boy to go as a female character for Halloween will “make him” gay? What kind of intelligence is that? What kind of logic? Do these people read? What kind of closed, stunted and narrow mind does it take to feel that any of that is a good thing to do or say or believe about the world?

I’m sorry, I’m not being very accepting and understanding here. I simply cannot wrap my own head around how someone could think this way.

Words are powerful. They have a direct, physical impact on the world. Look at all the teenagers recently who have committed suicide because of bullying — anti-LGBTQ bullying specifically. You say something like McCance did, and you could contribute to the ending of a life. Do people GET that? I mean, really?

Because if they do, I don’t, I mean, I can’t… Seriously?!

What makes people hate another group of people so deeply? It’s a more than a little flippy to think that someone out there would feel free to say things like that about/to ME. And I look at my life, and wonder how the heck anyone would ever be able to conjure up that kind of intense hatred for me. Seriously, folks, my life is pretty bland. What do I do that is so terrible, so threatening, that that kind of response would ever be understandable? I work too much at a job that doesn’t pay me well enough, but that makes me happy most of the time despite some of its random B.S. – and that does pay the bills. My partner does the same. Evenings, I come home to my partner and our three dogs, make dinner, watch some TV or a movie, read a bit, play with the dogs, talk with my partner about our days… If we’re not too tired or stressed, we have sex — like most couples, we’re often tired and stressed and simply holding each other and relaxing is enough or even all we can do some nights. Weekends, we fix things around the house, go grocery shopping, clean the house, maybe get out for a bike ride or hike. We call our mothers regularly, hang out with friends when we can carve out the time, and try to squeeze in some creative time — he, to practice guitar and write spoken word; me, to write and learn how to use my camera.

Wow. Reading all that, I can TOTALLY see why someone would find me threatening. I have a stable life, a loving relationship, I own a home and pay my taxes and bills, and I drain my brain every semester to teach your children how to write so they can succeed in their college classes and jobs.

Damn, I am evil, aren’t I? I must have an FBI file somewhere. Ninjas following me around to make sure I don’t do anything to undermine the very foundations of society, like, you know, giving my partner a hug.

I keep trying to find a way to “get” people who think and feel that way, and just can’t. I don’t know why I need or want to — maybe it’s that I’d feel safer if there was some rational explanation for that kind of thinking, which would allow me to believe that there might be a rational means of combating it.

But the point, I guess, is that there is no reason for the kind of actions and statements I reference above. I love, I live, just like anyone else — I just happen to do both with a queer partner. That’s it. That’s my crime. My partner was born with the same genitalia as mine. My partner is genderqueer, daring to live as the man he is despite what those birth genitalia were. People who love someone of the same sex as themselves, or who realize that their genitalia are not an accurate determinate of their gender, by those simple facts, no matter what kind of people they are and what good they might be doing in the world, deserve that kind of reaction, according to some. By simply changing who my partner is, I became one of those deserving of that kind of thinking and judgment and hatred. People just like me are getting attacked by these hurtful words — and are being attacked with fists and knives and guns, too.  It is so arbitrary, so random, so… unjustifiable. It can just take my breath away sometimes.

I wonder if this is a club you can join even though you just spotted your dad shuffling around Trader Joe’s last Saturday morning. (I mean, I really saw him – flesh and blood and misty breath on the mirror if we put one in front of his lips. I’m not seeing ghosts. My dad, as far as I know, is very much alive and kicking in a medically verifiable kind of way.)

When does a father die in the eyes of his child? When does a daughter feel her dad is really gone from the – well, her – world?

Mine was dying, on life support, for many years. He was never really what you could call there in any real sense – he seemed to find my brother and I messy, loud, and annoying. We were something to be handed to our mom for care and attention, and then trotted out when we were clean and quiet and doing things like getting A’s in school.

Once we moved to Tucson, when I was just 11, and dad’s affair with my mom’s best friend came out (we had actually moved to Tucson as a way for him to follow her out here – her husband had been transferred out here), he got mean. I know now what to call what dad did: emotional abuse. I think the only reason it never turned into physical abuse was because my mother went all fierce mama bear and threatened to kill him if he ever touched us. Dad, rightly I believe, didn’t test her.

But he was mean. He was cold, emotionally unavailable, and was critical more often than not when he spoke, rather than loving or open or supportive. He would withhold touch and eye contact, turning his back on us, literally. He began drinking a lot, becoming what professionals would call a functional alcoholic. He didn’t miss work, and managed to be charming and polite in public. When we all went out, he would show us off, which could look like love and a true parental pride, but from my point of view – born of the stark contrast between this public performance and his home treatment of us – was nothing more than him working to bask in some reflected glory.

Case in point here: After working my ass off in high school to get great grades and make myself attractive to Big Schools, I got accepted to some of those Big Schools. For whatever reasons, I set my heart on Wellesley. I earned some big scholarships due to my hard work, and the school offered me decent money, such that my family only needed to provide about $3000 a year total for me to go there. We were not poor. This would not destroy us. I knew dad was pleased with my acceptances there and to Yale and Barnard and Williams and Mount Holyoke. Of course this would be ok.

He said no.

I fell completely apart in the living room, literally collapsing on the floor. After some tense words from my mom, in that same tone I imagine she used when ensuring he would never hit us, he relented. After all, how could he explain how his daughter, accepted to all these great schools, ended up at the UA?

So, yeah, anyhow. I worked for years, with mom’s encouragement (“he’s your only father” she kept reminding me), to build a relationship with him. And we had one of sorts. Polite, comfortable enough most of the time, never really deep. But there.

And then there was this Event. I screwed up, owned it like a good adult does (I was 36 at the time), apologized. And got told that was no good: “it’s broken and it can’t be fixed.” Now, there’s a lot more to the story, but I need you to trust me here: what I did was not as traumatic as all that. It sucked, and I was stupid, but it’s not like I emotionally abused him for years or had cheated on his mom and had planned to leave the family and never apologized for any of that (yes, I have some unresolved anger here). That was 7 years ago. After years of me apologizing when he and I would fight, and him never apologizing for his role in any of it or for anything he had done to hurt me, I. Was. Done. I told him he could not treat me like a child anymore, and I apologized again, asking what I could do. He repeated how broken it was. So I blinked, went a bit numb, and responded, “Then call me when there’s something I can do.” I then turned on my heel and walked out.

For 7 years, my dad woke up every day and chose not to call me.

Sometime over those 7 years, my dad died for me. But then again, he was there in Trader Joe’s, breathing and talking to his wife and buying wine.

Then again, I walked right past him and he didn’t notice. Then again, I am not even close to the person I was the last time he saw me, and he has no idea – doesn’t know my ex and I had bought a new house, doesn’t know the ex is an ex, doesn’t know I came out, doesn’t know my amazing partner and that he and I were parents for a while and will be again and that I have a cool 4WD truck and that my career is really really cool now.

Then again, I did learn to live in a world where he wasn’t – and that was actually long before he and I stopped talking. So. Welcome to the club, Chris.