A Map of Veins

A mind dripping pus and inflammation
miswired and gnawed into pieces.
Tainted by grotesque lust -
if I am so pure and wise and sweet,
why can`t you meet my eyes?

Reaching for a flesh vessel,
a map of veins to guide me home.
But all I found was smoke and mirrors.
Blue gaslight, burning in it`s coldness and lies.

I found children, gotten lost on their way to adulthood.
I drowned to show them the way, to see them leave when it became
too close, too safe, too visible.
But it`s ok, they always left me one new piece,
more medicine to whisper in your cracks.

I embrace you with my loose ligaments, with
my nerves frizzling from bright noises and screeching colors.
Love, they say, is celebrated for its resilience.

- Lenni Alen

 Inspired by and the first and last lines loaned from the awesome Vanessa Rochelle Lewis/Jezebel Delilah X!

How to Love a Woman who has been to Hell & Back

This is what it`s like to love a borderline woman. My platonic partner is diagnosed (and my mum clearly has it too). How I have been warned by her and other people to stay away, but I love her. She is not a mess, but a beautiful, sensitive, intense and fragile being. One of the truest and most mentally and emotionally intimate persons I know.

"The Woman Who Has Been To Hell And Back Is Not Easy To Love.

Many have tried. Most have failed.

The weak need not attempt, for it will take more strength than you even know you possess; more patience, more resilience, more tenacity, more resolve. It requires a relentless love, one that is determined and not easily defeated.

For the woman who has been to hell and back will push you away. She will test you in her desire to know what you are made of, whether you have what it takes to weather her storm. Because she is unpredictable—at times a hurricane, a force of nature that rides on the fury of her suffering; other times a gentle rain, calm, still and quiet.

When she is the gentle rain that falls in time to her silent tears, love her.

When she is the thunder and lightning and ferocious winds that wreak havoc, love her harder.

She is a contradiction, a pendulum that will forever swing between fear of suffocation and fear of abandonment, and even she will not know how to find the balance between the two. Because today, although she will never tell you, she will feel insecure. She will want you to stay close, to tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss her on her forehead and hold her in the strength of your arms. But tomorrow she will crave her independence, her space, her solitude.

For while you have slept, she has been awake, unable to slow her thoughts, watching clocks and chasing time, trying to make the broken pieces fit, to make sense of it all—of where and how she fits. She fights her demons and slays her dragons, afraid if she goes to sleep they will gain the upper hand, afraid if she goes to sleep she will no longer be in control. Tomorrow she will be tired, and your presence will smother her. She will need only herself.

When she reaches out to you, love her.

When she pushes you away, lover her harder.

New situations and places and people and experiences will make her anxious. She will be fiercely independent and long to overcome her fears, all the while as terrified as a small child alone in the big world. Sometimes she will need to be courageous, to prove to herself she has what it takes. Other times she will need you to take her hand and hold it firmly in yours. Sometimes she may not know what she needs, and you will need to read her like a book with worn pages and a tattered spine and be what she needs when she does not know herself.

When she is brave and steps into the world on her own, love her.

When she is scared, but refuses to take your hand, love her harder.

She will live in fear of not being enough and always being too much—an endless battle to find the middle ground. Ashamed if the scale falls one way or the other, ashamed to be herself for no one has ever loved her both when she is small and also when she is tremendous.

She will always love you with caution, with one foot out the door. For she does not understand a love with no conditions, one that is powerful enough to withstand hard times. She cannot allow herself to fully trust in your love, and she will keep parts of her heart hidden—the parts that have been hurt the most, the parts she can’t risk being hurt again when she has worked so hard to stitch them together.

She will always watch, wait and expect you to leave first. And when you don’t, she has a truth written upon her heart that says you will—it’s only a matter of time, for everyone who loves her leaves her. And so she will seek to sabotage the relationship; she will seek to destroy it, she will seek to leave first, she will seek to hurt you before you can hurt her. This is how she stays in control, this is how she survives, how she will ensure she will not get hurt again.

When she wants to love you, love her.

When she wants to hurt you, love her harder.

Being out of control terrifies her. Don’t ever make her feel powerless, trapped or without her freedom. She needs to dance barefoot under enormous blue skies, to feel sand between her toes, to run with wolves as the wind weaves magic through her hair, for here is where her healing is found. Never clip her wings, for if she has the freedom to fly, she will always come back to you.

Love her when it’s easy, and love her harder when it’s not.

Love her in a way that will defy all she has ever known love to be.

Love her because you understand with every fiber of your soul the gift of her love, what it has cost her to offer you her fragile heart.

She does not need you. She has chosen you.

Because you have what it takes to survive the storm.

Because even when she doesn’t know how to love, you know how to love harder."

Written by Kathy Parker 

Alex Foster chapter 21

We slept with the "outcasts", under stars and fumes. Nika came to sleep next to me and wrapped his left hand around me. One would expect that by now I would have already gotten used to it, but being near him still made me nervous. It made me anxious and afraid, but in some weird way also soothed me.

I was just about to fall asleep when I felt Nika`s hand sliding down on my stomach and touching bare skin just above the pants' waistline. It felt like an electric shock, I couldn`t move even though a voice in my head screamed and told me to run away. Then my body betrayed me. My lower abdomen and crotch started burning. When I realized what was happening, I got a panic attack, I trembled and tears blurred my vision. Memories flashed in my mind and made me want to throw up. Probably concerned of my reaction, Nika moved his hand to my shoulder. That freed my body from fear paralysis and I ran stumbling away from Nika.

When I had calmed down a bit, I started to feel guilty. I was the one who had hurt Nika, he would have had the right to feel like this, not me. Nika walked over to me hesitantly and said softly: "I apologize Jan, I should have understood that it was even more traumatic to you."

I grabbed his hand and said firmly: "I don`t want you to feel guilty, what happened wasn`t your fault. I was the one who made a horrible deed, I hurt you." When I noticed the situation`s intimacy, I let go of Nika`s hand and looked away, feeling self-conscious. "Come, lets go to sleep." 

Loneliness and yearning

Do you know the feeling of soul deep emptiness, the burden you feel even on your best days, when you are genuinely happy? The loneliness that can`t be filled, no matter how many loving and supportive relationships you have? The yearning that, yes, does include physical desire. But the hardest to bear is the yearning for love and connection. Every cell of my body aches to be a part of a boy`s live, their friend and a mentor. Is it wrong? And can I ever have it?

A letter to myself and my fellow MAPs

I`m sorry you are treated so cruelly, called a monster and dehumanized even by people who say they love you. Because they simply dont know, could never imagine you are one of them. Those others "who should be locked away, who are all evil".

But that`s not true, you are not evil. You are a beautiful, empathetic being, and your feelings and thoughts dont change it. Thoughts dont cause harm unless acted on, and you have never and will never do it.

I`m sorry you have deeply hated and been disgusted of yourself because of those messages. I am sorry you been deeply hurt, invisible, scared of being seen for so long. But not a day more. You deserve to be treated as a human being as much as everyone else.

You’ve had a rough time so far haven’t you? Stuck with an attraction you never asked for. I want you to take a moment of silence for the pain you’ve felt because of this. You’ve lived with a lot of stress from the fear and secrecy that no one around you could ever understand truly. It’s okay for you to take a moment to mourn that time lost in your life that you might’ve otherwise enjoyed.

During that silence, did you hear it? Your heart beating triumphantly in your chest? That means you won and are still winning. Hold on to that heartbeat. Your anguish is valid and real but so is moving on and living without it.You’re allowed to move past the shame. You’re allowed to live without this being a burden to you.

Alex Foster chapter 20

As we drove, on the roadside alternated vast corn fields and dry, barren desert, in the middle of which stood factories, drilling sites and nuclear power plants. Eventually we arrived at the trailer village. The villagers watched us from a distance, wary, until finally one of the men came to talk to us. "What are you here for?" he asked, sounding suspicious and harsh. At first I thought he was old, as he was stooping and tired-looking, but looking more closely I saw that his skin was not wrinkled - he could not be older than forty yet.




When I told I had helped Arya and therefore fled the police, the villagers welcomed us. They were still watching us warily, but invited us to eat around the campfire. Arya cut off the silence with a laugh: "I came with you here in the middle of the desert, but I know hardly anything about you. Could you tell me your secret? " We were glancing at each other, until finally I started. "Well, I was homeschooled for eight years. And I`m also a trans man." I was a little bit nervous to say the last sentence, Echelon and Frank were the only ones who knew it. Everyone, however, viewed it casually; as Arya said, "It does not matter what you have in your pants, but what you have in your heart. And you're the bravest person I know. "

"I am a former professional video game player, but I stopped competing a couple of years ago when I got tired of being a celebrity. I`m also genderfluid and I have dyspraxia." Frank said, smiling shyly. “Dyspraxia? What it means?” Arya asked. "It`s a neurological disorder that affects cross and fine motor coordination, and sometimes also speech. Daniel Radcliffe has it too." Frank explained.




Echelon told that she worked as a teacher in Unschooling Center, which was far from an ordinary teaching job. “Well, my secret you already know”, Janus said tensely. “Jan..You don`t have to talk about it if you don`t want, they will surely understand.”


“I don`t want to be afraid that they will find out about it and turn their backs to me. Besides, these incidents have made me who I am, how anyone could ever truly know me unless I talk about it?” After the story was over, a long silence fell; no one could find the right words, even though we were empathetic. It was cut off when Nika said, looking straight into our eyes: “And my secret is that I love him, as more than a brother, despite what he has done.”

Alex Foster chapter 19

Xavier turned and looked at Janus: “Don`t you know? Next week they will pass a law that makes it mandatory for everyone in UCSA to have RFID tag under their skin. You can`t stay there or you will get caught. Janus and Nika, you can stay if you want. Me and other Harlequins are gonna start jamming the system, swapping the codes in RFID tags. Then everyone will appear guilty and the chaos will force them to back up. But you can`t risk being arrested. Do you have a plan where to go?”

“At first to Unschooling Center where I´m working, and then to Wasteland. We don`t know what to do then.” Echelon answered. Janus continued: “And we will go with them. I know it`s not a safe place for Nika, but we need a new start and they need us.” 

The Unschoolin Centre was a huge complex built from cargo containers. The children were taught not only regular school subjects, but also programming, electronics and noetic sciences.  The most important thing, however, was that there was taught independent thinking and learning, collaboration, problem solving and empathy. It was the perfect place to train New Children: children (both Angels and ordinary humans) who were the next step in human evolution. Angels literally, but all children had more compassion, a strong intuition, anxiety from broken systems and a need to create better ones. 

 

I loved the children and hoped I could stay and learn with them, but we had to keep going. At least I knew this world would be in good hands someday. We took Unschooling bus and drived to Wasteland. It was owned by Monsanto, fracking and nuclear power companies. The whole area was almost unlivable:  polluted with radiation and chemicals, full of litter and suffered from drough. The people who lived here, had either refused to join United Corporate States of America, or had been exiled. They were hungry and hard people, suffering from different kinds of illnesses. They didn´t trust outsiders, but they helped those who had the common enemy: the United Corporate States of America.