Albuquerque/Santa Fe/Taos

It was near the end of our 11-hour drive to Albuquerque to see Cass when Jennifer revealed she (and her daughter) had taken exception to my, Brain Chemistry post, and by, "taken exception to" of course I mean outright disagreed. I assumed I knew where this was going (and I wasn't wrong), but to hear her articulate it absolutely worked. In short, if I understand elementary physics, and the energy and wavelengths thereof (admittedly, the idea that colors are nothing more than different frequencies of reflected wavelengths still baffles me from time to time), then brain chemistry is nothing more than another medium which can be manipulated.

Once she was finished with her explanations, I assumed there would be a duration involved where I started to practically apply the idea into my life to work my way through its eradication. Surprisingly, that's not what happened at all. As readers of this blog are no doubt familiar, that which I am able to put a name to (or figure out) no longer plagues me. So it was with this. It simply ceased to exist. It was so abrupt, and total, that I was initially unsure I could trust it.

As we neared our final destination, I continued to test the sudden absence of what has plagued me for these many years to ascertain if it was as real as it felt. For this ever-present longing; desire to be absent after so long felt absolutely foreign. Similar feelings have come over me before - I've posted them here - said then aloud to both Cass and Jennifer, but always with the caveat that I understood those feelings to be fleeting; that they could resurface at any time. That part didn't happen this time. There were no caveats. They wouldn't be resurfacing. I knew this because the chemicals which had been coursing through my body for an unprecedented 30-months were gone.

It was proven 8-minutes after arriving at Cass' house. The tempering of my emotions had finally concluded. Part of what I was holding onto (again, recorded in this very blog), was the unwillingness to voluntarily unhinge from hope. Often all we have is hope. I'd mentioned to Cass just a week prior that I would rather continue this rollercoaster of emotions indefinitely than lose any semblance of longing, or desire. Hell, how many of my quotes from Empirical Epistomology cover this exact scenario? Worse still, I was bereft at the idea of becoming indifferent to the woman I loved; the same woman who often enumerated a lengthy, highly specific, ever growing list of reasons why we'd never be together.

I was downright giddy when told Cass, "I no longer lust after, nor long for you!" The very best part was still loving every part of her for who she was and what she offers both myself, and the world, without feeling any loss whatsoever - to finally have a happy and healthy relationship with her. I could finally be the gay best friend she's always wanted, and needed. Not begrudgingly, but excitedly so! I had a wonderful visit with her and the kids, and can't wait for my next trip back in May of this year for her oldest's graduation.

There were other things which were traversed separate from my involvement with Cass. Her oldest unconsciously called me, "Dad" twice when she was excited about a couple of projects we'd been working on together. It saddened me she never got the same attention from her own father, but I was comforted that her unconscious mind felt safe when she was happy. Oh, and Cass did reveal to me that all her kids loved Jennifer <3 Like, what's not to love, right?

My last night there I dreamed I traveled across dimensions. I was in an office space - my own - and would “build” vertically, identical iterations of my desk and workspace atop one another. Each new level corresponded to a different dimension. Once I “climbed” to each level I could interact with the technology on my desk and observe/experience life as it was there - at least in the forced perspective of where I was within the constraints of the office itself. The higher I got the faster I would run through each room of the office observing both the differences each dimension had to offer as well as sometimes watching my own past actions or modified past actions play out. The higher I climbed, the earlier and earlier in a linear timeline seemed to be taking place, until there were fewer and fewer built offices, and the last door contained only Samuel L. Jackson, who was my narrator. After a breif conversation with him, I started losing some of the in-between dimensions in the vertical stack of desks. As one might be able to imagine, this eventually collapsed the entire construct upon which it was built, and I cam crashing down with it. I awoke gasping for breath and covered in sweat. Only a couple of hours had passed in real space - it was 0200.

Jennifer and I left in the morning, taking a lazy drive to Santa Fe for a long morning, then spent the rest of the day getting to, and enjoying Taos, my first time back since 2011.