INTERSECTIONALITY
The Windmills of My Mind: A Spectrum of Emotions
Prologue
This is my truth. My truth is the only thing I know for certain, in this life. This gives you more insight into my life. As someone who is painfully private, I’m still transparent. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. In this piece you’ll read about love, loss, grief and the inner machinations of my mind.
A Peek Inside My Mind
It was recently suggested that I may be neurodivergent. Not at all offended, I inquired why. After prayerfully listening, I felt so seen — perhaps for the first time. I have long been someone who has extreme binary thinking. You’re either on my side or you’re against me. I either love you or I don’t think of you. You’re good or you’re evil. Additionally, I experience emotions very intensely: love, hate, happiness, sadness, anger, and apathy, are my usual companions.
As I sit here, prattling out this stream of consciousness-style essay, I’m overwrought with anger and sadness. Honestly, I’m a bit disgusted with myself for allowing myself to feel this way. People always disagree with me when I say I can turn off my emotions and forget all about someone or something, if I so choose. Thankfully, I’ve never been one to give much credence to anyone’s thoughts or opinions where I am concerned.
When I am feeling angry, sad, or hateful, I allow it to wholly consume me. I have a very academic way of processing my emotions. In allowing it to consume me, I can deconstruct every component until I’ve established a clear root-cause, allowing me to decide how I would like to proceed. These are probably the most powerful of my emotions because if they exceed their zenith in intensity, I become irrational. My actions can become ruthlessly fell.
Thanks to personal growth and stoicism, my past actions are a thing of the past. However, it does satiate that dark side of me that ruminates on how the old me would have dealt with a situation since the new me has evolved. The old me would immediately go for scorched earth, and that was the only acceptable option — categorical destruction, no matter the cost. Though my anger is all-consuming, sadness is the emotion I always carry with me.
Sadness Is Not An Absence Of Joy, But A Remembrance Of It
Since I was a child, I have not handled loss very well. I still don’t carry it well. I often think of a quote from the film Doubt when Father Flynn asks Meryl Streep’s steely character where her compassion is, to which she unflinchingly retorts, “Nowhere you can get at it.” Though I don’t carry my sadness very well, nobody will ever know it. It’s all collectively compartmentalized into a space deep inside me until I can’t conceal it anymore and the floodgates come bursting through.
My third grade class had a student teacher, Mrs. Garrison, and she was my absolute favorite person in the world. She was so kind, and the love she had for teaching was palpable. When her semester was over and she told us she wouldn’t be coming back anymore, I was distraught. I cried for days, to the point where I spent a lot of time with the school counselor. I guess they were concerned about me or whatever.
I suppose loss haunts me because there is nothing I can do about it. It’s out of my control and that is one of my greatest fears — not having control. Loss comes in many forms, and it is the permanent loss that truly stuns my vulnerabilities into a state of paralysis. This is why I carry it with me always. It hurts like hell, but I never want to forget them.
When I say loss, I don’t mean the end of a friendship or a relationship. I mean in situations like a Mrs. Garrison leaving — delving more deeply, situations like death. I understand that this is an inevitable part of life that no one can escape and perhaps that’s the one thing which keeps me grounded when thinking about loss and death.
Farewell, My Friend
A few years ago, a good friend and I were in Marfa for my birthday. Marfa is one of my favorite places on the planet, and the trip was such a great success! The night before we departed, I couldn’t sleep very well. We had a long day of driving ahead the next day, so I was in bed by a reasonable time, 10:00 o’clock or so. But I finally drifted off to sleep.
Suddenly, it was as if I was compelled awake. It was just like scenes in movies where the protagonist wakes up from a dead sleep, gasping. This felt like divine intervention to me. The only thought on my mind was my friend, Ramon. I hadn’t heard from him in over a year. The last time I talked to him, he wasn’t doing very well, and I was seriously concerned for him.
Despite the obvious turmoil and pain he was suffering, he still smiled and assured me he was fine. He lifted me up, as was the dynamic in our relationship — we lifted one another up, always, and we supported one another.
With him being the only thing on my mind, I picked up my phone, as though I was a marionette being controlled by the strings of an unknown ruler. I typed his full name into the search bar, and the very first thing I saw gave me such a chill. I felt like my heart stopped, and I stopped breathing for a moment. It was an obituary for Ramon.
I was absolutely gutted. I released one of those silent screams that no soul in this realm could hear or could comprehend if they could. I immediately knew how he died because we shared the same dark sense of humor and he often joked about unaliving himself. It was about 4:00 a.m. and suffice to say, I didn’t sleep anymore that day.
I lay in my bed for the next few hours, sobbing. I was so upset. I am still distraught, even in this very moment. Knowing I had about 12 hours of driving ahead of us, my exhaustion from the lack of sleep and emotional release, none of it mattered. We met downstairs to load the car and went to grab some coffee, and did some last-minute shopping before we hit the road.
I pretended like I was fine, only risking exposing my profound sadness when certain songs would play and I had to stop singing along, or else my saturnine sorrow would come pouring out.
Isn’t life funny? Just as I was writing that very passage, my playlist skipped to a song called Missing You. In this moment, I know that although Ramon is no longer here, physically, he is always with me. Everyone I’ve ever lost is here with me, and I see reminders all the time. Sometimes the reminders make me smile.
Other moments like now, I can’t conceal my heartbreak, and I candidly let my tears flow, as I am tucked away quietly in my room. If I could only feel a singular moment of happiness forever, it would be sadness—sadness from loss. Yes, it hurts, but it hurts because these are people I have loved and will always love.
It reminds me that I was once happy and a little more whole when I knew them, when they were here with us. In these moments, I feel ordinarily human and very much alive.
The Windmills Of My Mind
Aside from my omnipresent sadness, when I first sat down at my computer screen this evening, I felt anger — I still do. Last night, I posted the third part of a series I am writing, describing my journey over the last four months with my partner: being in a relationship with him and being his caretaker.
The series is insurmountably heavy, and I was feeling the heft of these months again and needed a change of pace. I shifted my focus and decided I wanted to write about the origin story of my francophone-styled name, Timothée LaJeunesse, and the journey of my evolution to the person I am writing these words.
I was loving what I was writing, and then that all came to a screeching halt. It was well after 1:00 a.m., and I received a flurry of texts from my partner. The texts led to a phone call, and many more messages — we had an awful fight.
He tried to gaslight his current misfortune as a result of my actions. After spending several days together, I told him he could stay one more night before he should probably go home. Human interaction is exhausting for me, and even in being with someone I love madly, my solitude is a necessary and rejuvenating. It’s a non-negotiable.
However, he decided he wanted to go hang out with a friend yesterday evening, he hadn’t seen for a while — so I sent him on his way without hesitation or pause. This hurt him, but I didn’t care. I don’t ever want to be in the way of something he wants. Please, go do what you want if being with me isn’t what you want.
I remind him of this always. After all, who am I? He really doesn’t like it when I do this, but it’s just my truth. Instead of hitting below the belt or matching and topping his negative emotions after reading his barrage of messages, I decided to share my vulnerability with him. Either pathway would have been my truth, but I decided to take the path of least resistance.
I didn’t have any more fight left in me. He apologized, profusely, and tried to make it right, but I didn’t respond. He sent more messages later in the morning, further apologizing, and he even called me — all unanswered. After my final meeting, I decided to call him. It was a brief exchange, but he understood I didn’t want to talk to him or see him at that moment, so our call ended.
I was still upset by what happened. It was bound to happen because of how things were left between us when I dropped him off at home earlier, yesterday. We had spent several consecutive days together, and it had all been great. There was no drama, and we were having the kinds of moments that reminded me of why I am in love with him, and why I have tolerated so much in this relationship…surviving the jarring shifts in our relationship.
The anger comes into play because I decided I did want to see him now, and I wanted to go to him. I look at his location on my phone, and he’s out in the city. This absolutely incensed me! Instead of pleading with me and imploring me to spend time with him after I accepted his apologies, he’s out on a bender.
He lives with a couple of mental health disorders, and he doesn’t often make good decisions when his emotions are heightened. This was one of those moments. I have no one to blame for how I feel because I have sabotaged myself with my own expectations.
I should know better. I’ve been down this path with him countless times over the last 8 years. We fight and we make up. Then the cycle begins again, and we fight, then we make up. It’s really bothering me at this point because it invokes the feelings I was writing about in my other essay, last night before he disrupted my peace — I’m in a rut.
Aftermath
I’m not entirely unhappy. I’m happy to have a great job, despite the current challenges at work. I live in a beautiful home. I have people who love me unconditionally, and I want for nothing — except him. I have convinced myself that I need him because I do. My love for him is discerningly ravenous. I know he loves me as well because after 8 years, he’s still here.
Sure, he does stupid things and says cruel things, but his mental illness is largely at fault. I was talking with his sister this evening, and I explained to her that he can’t hurt my feelings with his words. That’s not why I’m upset. I’m upset because when he’s in these escalated states, his intentions are to hurt me because he is hurting.
As the old adage goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” He is that cliché manifested. Okay, he apologized, but I’ve been here so many times lately. I can’t trust what he says because I see what he does. I need to see changed behavior from him that lasts. Unfortunately, he’s not capable of that right now.
He won’t be capable of that until he does the work to get better, tackling his mental health problems and the internal turmoil he lives with daily. Instead of going out and doing something I know would hurt him and invoke the rage lurking inside him, I decided to do nothing.
I did my remaining laundry, and I decided to write. These were the only options for me that wouldn’t result in remorse and disappointment in myself tomorrow morning. Writing has truly been my saving grace.
L’epilogue
I haven’t written anything of substance since I published my grad school dissertation in an academic journal. Before that, not since I had my own website and posted everything from vapid pop culture analysis to personal stories. I did it for me, so any engagement garnered from my writing was only a bonus. But I enjoyed hearing feedback from folks on my writing.
Life gets busy, and things get pushed aside. Sadly, that was the case with my writing. I really do love writing. Again, I do it for me, and I have been overcome with such positive feedback while on this renewed journey. Writers draw inspiration from their lives, and my life has been simply unbelievable since my partner came back into my life.
I am someone in a relationship, but that’s not all of me. However, this relationship has consumed me. Everything I’ve written, including this personal essay, has been about my relationship. My essays and articles on Medium will cover all aspects of my life — past, present, and future. It just so happens my present is driven by this relationship.
So for now, I’m that guy in the tumultuous relationship, who may or may not be neurodivergent, doing my very best to survive through my truth and through these words. At the end of it all, I have my truth — in this moment, that’s enough for me.
