It’s Pride month and I’m proudly gayer than ever. (I’m lucky to live in Washington state.) My first Pride was nine years ago. I went to the Pride parade in San Diego with Joe*. I had just come out as bisexual and we had come out together as non-monogamous. I put colored eyeshadow on in streaks, gelled my newly purple hair up, and looked like a bulldyke, which was thrilling and scary. I met the woman I had my first ongoing relationship with at a Pride dance that Saturday night and we spent Sunday making out in her car.

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I’ve learned so much about myself in the last ten years. Some of it was really hard. I came out again and again, which is how it is for some people who don’t fit in neat boxes. I hurt people I love. People I loved hurt me. I would go through it all again to be here now.** I’ll always wish there had been a more simple and easier way to grow up, but that isn’t the life package I was handed on entry.

Speaking of neat boxes, I know some folks are still confused about how I identify. I’m queer, non-binary trans, and genderfluid. I don’t identify as a man or a woman. I am not a trans man. I find myself most often feeling like a combo platter of traits that others use to assign as male or female. But to me, those traits, when laced together, simply feel like I’m myself and in the gender flow. I love when people in my life use all different pronouns for me. Because of how I feel in my gender, all the pronouns are right and wrong, which makes them pretty inconsequential to me personally. (However, I staunchly support using the pronouns someone has told you are theirs. It seems like such a small thing to do to show love and care. Like, what a low bar.)

I grew up feeling the heavy weight of how I was failing at being a girl and then a woman. Being called only she/her didn’t feel good, but there were no other choices back then. I didn’t understand why it felt bad, so I learned to ignore it. And in the last five years, I have learned that I don’t actually care what pronouns are used. What I actually care about is if the person using them to describe me insists that I am either a man or a woman in their usage. I reject their agenda. I am neither. I am both. I’m actually a tender flower.

I mentioned the Great Purge and Organization Event of 2026 in my last newsletter. The GPOE2026 has served some lovely purposes. Twice someone has needed a specific charging cord and I had one in their waiting hands in under a minute. Jessica*** needed a hand cream and I knew where the bag of unguents ​​was in the bathroom, under the sink, in the basket, behind the bandages. I also knew nothing in there was expired or crusty on the top. Is it weird to feel proud to pass a tube to my friend in a flourishing, zero-hesitation move?

What I didn’t think through was what The GPOE2026 purging process meant for Brandelyn. I was so deeply inside my cleaning journey, truly feeling like I was the one doing the work in a way that she wouldn’t need to do anything, and that instead, she would just benefit, that I missed it. This is such a great example of how my brain gets hyper-focused on a task and it’s like my peripheral vision lessens to the point where I can only see straight ahead. I’m doing this project and I’m going to see it to completion come hell or high water.

Brandelyn came home many nights during that two week period with a different assortment of items heaped on the dining room table. She'd find me sorting bathroom cleaners or all the batteries and lightbulbs or every toiletry item that had been jammed in corners or everything from the towels and napkins drawers. I’d say, “Hi baby, welcome home,” and she'd say, “Oh, wow.” And then I’d point to the giant pile of things I needed her to look over before I threw them out or gave them away.

I did finally understand what I was asking of her, but even then, I couldn’t stop before finishing absolutely everything from every nook and cranny. On the day we had someone coming to stay with us in the evening, I took out all the greeting cards, envelopes, post cards, ribbons, party bags, and gift boxes. When she walked in the door that afternoon, I saw the visual hit her face. I was at first mystified at her dismay, because hadn’t I told her I was going to finish up that day and hadn’t she said yes, ok? And then I wondered to myself why I hadn’t thought about the impact of seeing a giant mess hours before a guest came and that I hadn’t actually told her I was going to sort through all those particular items, so the phrase “finish up” could have meant anything. And I thought about what it would have meant to me to not finish sorting. Could I have held it? Could I have known that I had almost done it all and have that feel good enough? And I actually didn’t think so. I needed to finish.

Whatever that need is around completing a project, it’s exacerbated by the way my body signals get crossed. When I’m knee-deep in a process, in that super pinpointed, focused place, I forget about my body or that I even have a body. I don’t remember to eat on a good day, let alone on a stressful or busy one. I don’t feel hungry and I actually feel some annoyance if I need to stop and make food for anyone else, even though that’s the only way I remember to feed myself. I don’t feel thirsty or remember to drink water. I don’t rest unless my body stops having the ability to move and forces me to. This phenomenon has been tolerated by some partners, ignored by others, and has been a point of contention with a few. (The harshest interaction was when one partner, on maybe the third day in a row that I forgot to eat and subsequently got woozy around 5pm, asked me in the Home Depot parking lot, “Are you grown?!!” Their frustrated face in that moment is seared into my mind.)

These days I’m curious about how my neurodiverse brain composition feeds this problem. I know that my childhood experiences and the ways I learned to dissociate, particularly with pain and discomfort, mean I have to work hard to be grounded in moments that are uncomfortable. If I don’t think to do that intentionally, I’m really not in my body. And in many ways, I have nailed changing that for myself in the last decade by using timers to remind me to check in with how I’m feeling and implementing habit stacking. But, I’m not skilled in it outside of those parameters.

Recently, I was at the lab getting bloodwork done. I get a lot of blood drawn. It’s part of having a bunch of autoimmune conditions and taking strong medications to treat them. I have my favorite labs with my favorite phlebotomists and keep my fingers crossed that I get one of them when I stop in. I have so many stories living in my arms of getting poked repeatedly, multiple needles, first one arm, then the other, then back again.

It just so happens that my best, full, accessible vein is a roller. The first thing I do when I sit down in the chair is point out to the phlebotomist where my good vein is and share that it often rolls and suggest a using a butterfly. They then palpate over my vein, comment on how good it is (it is really good!) and then I find out how experienced they are. If they have been doing their job for a number of years, they reach for a butterfly. If they haven’t, they tend to believe that even though I said it rolls, they don’t think that will happen to them.

I think the moment I automatically remove the connection of physical feelings to a sense of meaning is right as the needle goes in. (This process is not conscious.) The less-experienced phlebotomist will comment that the vein did indeed roll and then start sliding the needle around inside my arm, poking this way and that way, trying to hook the vein.

This is what happened during my last visit. As they continued to fish inside my arm, I suddenly realized that it hurt. It was painful. What was happening in my arm hurt enough that I could, probably should, say ouch. But, I didn’t. My face smiled. They apologized and said that if it didn’t work in the next few moments, they’d try my other arm. I smiled and said, “Yes, this is what happens sometimes,” but what I didn't say was, ow, or, stop, or, I insist you use a butterfly. I didn’t communicate any discomfort at all.

I understand the genesis of this behavior and I’ve spent decades working on it. I don’t totally understand the continuation of it and it’s something I want to dive deeper into learning about. It’s one of the reasons kink as a healing modality was so interesting to me. In any given situation, the person(s) who is doing things to my body can’t know how it feels to me if I don’t say anything to them about it. It’s been really great practice telling people things that before were unspoken. But, I don’t think to say some of these things to some people day to day, outside of a kink scene setting. The result is that small to medium harm regularly happens to me on my watch.

I think there are clues as to why I’m built this way in how my conservative, religious upbringing promotes both compliance and a long-suffering attitude, how my family of origin labeled me the contentious one and I felt ashamed to bring up complaints and questions, and how as a child who was having children, there literally was no time or energy to worry about how I was feeling and I spent those years mostly in a dissociated state.

In many ways, the other people in my life during those time periods were aware of my pain and it was ok with them that that was my experience. Over time, you learn that lesson well.

I’d love to end this by wrapping it up in a cute bow, but I’m getting more comfortable letting things simply be what they are, even if what they are is awkward. Instead of worrying about how you, my friend, the reader, might feel about it, I’m going to assume it’s ok with you, too, to be in the awkward moment with me.

See you next month! xo

*I hadn’t been to any Pride event before because of crowds and sun and body pain. I was worried I couldn’t hack it. I think I lasted about an hour at that parade.

**I would change how carefully I held (or didn’t) some of my relationships as they changed and morphed over time, particularly with Joe. It seems like every adult-coming-of-age story I hear includes a chemistry-fire relationship that burns everything to the ground and leaves havoc in its wake. Mine was no exception, but because Joe is so amazing, we continue to have a sweet friendship today. I’m very thankful.

***Jessica was with me to celebrate her 50th. We took her to a drag show, shoved her into the limelight, and she actually had a good time. I made these sweatshirts for everyone that have a very deep-cut, Mormon scriptural joke about “girding your loins.”

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