Armistice and Advice

Prologue

I am an unreliable narrator. Everyone is, really. But in the telling of this story: memory is faulty, and fallible, and tends to change and reshape the more you try to remember it. Science has proven this.

So, while I can indeed say this story is as accurate as I can remember it, to the best of my ability... this is only my perspective, and is quite inherently faulty for a large reason which will become evident. I believe it to be accurate. This does not necessarily mean it is.

This one is going to take a while to read.

---

1997, October

I had a stupid idea. I was out of high school, still at home, a failure at being a soldier, working retail, and trying to navigate a fragile relationship with my girlfriend of three years. Of course, the sensible thing to do was communicate and make it work, right? Right. So of course I did just that.

I'm lying. I put in for a couple weeks of vacation, bought a ticket on Amtrak to Amherst Massachusetts, and decided to go visit my long distance ex to... I don't know. Make things as fucking weird as possible. (I succeeded; I also got some really phenomenal, life-changing pizza too.) But that's not really what this story is about.

No, my next plan after Massachusetts was to take the train back down to DC, spend the night in the Greyhound terminal after walking several blocks through a not exactly safe neighborhood (self-preservation clearly is a skill I was short on), and then take the bus to visit my girlfriend up at Frostburg the following day. I really wasn't thinking my plan through more than a few steps at a time, and while I'd visited her a few times, I admittedly hadn't really done much thinking about what I was actually going to be doing up there. Other than spending time with her, I suppose. Visit my girlfriend at college, hang out, maybe (probably) fool around, enjoy a little vacation, and then head home and back to my retail job.

Interjection: we're going to need to call her something, so let's call her Tiana. That isn't anywhere close to her actual name, but as we're still friends (or, friends again) and she might read this, I predict she'll chuckle a little at why I picked it for her.

The actual bus ride up to Frostburg was a minor adventure involving a breakdown and equipment changes and confused passengers standing around a parking lot at 6am on a Sunday without any coffee, and at the time I was convinced that this would have been the big event of the whole trip, the story I would tell two decades later...

So, about that...

Finally arrived in Frostburg around maybe 9am. The Greyhound stop, today, appears to be in the campus itself. This would have been nice, but was not the case in 1997 -- I found myself in the middle of town, with a maybe half mile walk to Tiana's dorm. Hadn't been to it since I helped move her in a couple of months earlier, but it was one of the few tallish buildings on campus so was really hard to miss.

I said this was going to take a while but I'm painting a picture and trust me, this is going somewhere.

Made it to her dorm, not even sure how I got inside... This is a memory hole, see (of which more soon enough) but I remember walking there. Then I remember being at the door to her room. I'm pretty sure she let me in, mostly wrapped in a blanket because she was still in bed otherwise.

The room: as I recall, a small closet to one side of the entrance. Her bed to the left. It was sized for a double, but she had no roommate, and had bunked the two beds atop each other so she slept elevated, with her desk and workspace underneath. A small mini fridge on the wall to the right, inside of which was some illicit fortified wine. Industrial linoleum tiles, cinder block walls; an actual college dorm and not like the ones on TV. Utilitarian window directly opposite the entrance. She had climbed back up into bed.

"Can I join you?"

The bedclothes shrugged, "If you want."

I paused, "Clothes off? Buck nekkid snuggle?" That had been a thing with us, that year.

Another twitch of ambivalence and a catch in her voice that I really should have caught. I did it anyway and joined her. It was nice. She was warm and familiar and it was the last time that would ever happen and I didn't know it yet.

Nothing else happened, which I should have noticed, but maybe I was tired. In retrospect maybe I should have felt a difference, but maybe I was delusional at the time.

I don't remember much of that day. I do remember walking with her in her friend group, listening to her talk. I remember being in the dining hall briefly; was this the trip we all went into town for dinner? I don't remember. I honestly don't remember if this part of the story stretched across two days, or if it was the same day.

Memory loss is like that.

This is where I lose the thread of things. I scramble to hold onto what I can.

I remember:

Her talking to her friends about sex, and about my involvement in same. Complimentary and slightly backhanded comments at the same time that I didn't quite know how to respond to, but also I kept silent because I really didn't know most of these people.

Some vaguely emotional conversation around the theme that someone can't make someone else upset, because it takes that someone else to want to be affected by the first to be upset.

Time here is a blur. I know there had to have been some upset conversation in her room that evening because I do remember her going back out with her friends leaving me there; at some point coming back, by which I'd consumed a significant portion of the alcohol in her fridge. Her being disgusted with me, leaving again. Me running to an open window, screaming in incoherent rage out of it at her. Finishing off the rest of the booze; subsequently, passing out on her floor.

See, there were a couple of things at play here.

She knew about my femme side (then, of which I just thought I was a crossdresser). Sometimes she put it out of mind. Sometimes she tried to manage with it.

Mostly she disliked it, because I was not the sort of man she could picture being in a future like that.

So there was a strain there. It came and went. Sometimes it was bad (my very own whirlpool of a negative-reinforcement feedback loop); earlier that year I tried to slit my wrists over it, to wit.

Sometimes she borrowed my clothes. I could not mentally flex fast enough to figure that out..

The other aspect: we were all over each other while Tiana was at home on break; but the second she'd go back to school, while our conversations were unchanged, she was apparently seeing others.

In retrospect I really don't blame her, but at the time I refused to beleve it. Even when confronted directly about it by a then mutual friend, to whom Tiana had pretty much directly said as such. I still wouldn't believe it.

Tiana would say, "My life here at college is very... fluid."

That phrase still is wormed through my soul as one of the most tainted sets of words I can ever parse. Even to this day.

I should have seen it, but refused, because I was so much in love with her.

Even when, on a camping trip that summer of the same year, she directly told me of some of her sexual adventures. I heard it. I understood it. I still didn't believe it. Or want to believe.

Until that evening, drunk on her floor, when I realized it was probably over.

Memory gap.

I remember: waking up to her, a mix of anger and despair on her face. Her friends.

Gap.

Outside, cold night air. "He can't stay here. I need him somewhere else." "It's ok. I can take him."

Gap.

On my side in the back seat of someone's car, sometime later, the bumps of the road agony as I hyperventilated along the night drive.

Gap.

Being led into a townhouse, numb, coaxed onto a couch where I slept marginally and apparently howled tears.

Gap.

"He's crying like someone just died."

"Well yeah, he's grieving, he lost Tiana, that's over, she might as well have just died to him just now."

Gap.

Being awake again, morning. Apparently it was the off-campus home of one of her friends. I only remember this dimly, as if I was not there. A state of utter dissociation. Honestly, I think it actually started when I was in the car. I don't actually remember any of this as if it was happening to me; rather, I remember the events as if... through a pane of glass. (I actually just typed 'pain of glass' there. Such an appropriate slip.) On the couch, being talked to by Tiana's friends. An arrangement being made. I was going to be put back into someone else's dorm room, for a couple of nights; another good friend of Tiana's. I'd stay with him, and then head home once I was myself again.

You know, thinking back about this... I'm confused in retrospect why all of her friends where helping me like that. I think I may have just been a liability to everyone that nobody knew what to do with, and they certainly didn't want me to be around Tiana but I clearly was in no state of self-control to take care of my own matters.

I need to say this again because I will never feel that I ever adequately indicate how vague my memory of this time was. I was out from the alcohol initially, and clearly had a mental break of some kind between the hyperventilating and wailing and intermittent blacking out, and resultant fugue state. I was already having issues remembering more than a slideshow of events; and in the few years that followed my mood would consume me and burn more of the desire to remember out of my mind. But that was the future. Tiana's friends needed to move me someplace... if not safe, at the very least possibly convenient.

So that's how I wound up in Ken's room, looking at the Christmas lights under his bunked bed, watching him play Final Fantasy VII.

This is the important part. This is where all of this led up to.

I was just shy of 21 years old. I had a privileged life-- some would argue, a sheltered one. I'd had crushes, and a couple of deep ones, but Tiana was my first impassioned love. I wanted to marry her. I wanted to grow old with her. I had significant daydreams about that; entire fucking jouskas of how our married life would be and what we would say and how we would live. I had had all of my significant firsts with her (do the math). I dated her for 1/7th of my life, and now it was utterly over and I had no idea what to do about it. More than anything else, I wanted it to not be true. I wanted my life to just reset back to the normalcy of the previous summer. I wanted all of this, even knowing what I was learning about myself. Every fiber of my being just wanted to be with Tiana again, and forever. I wanted things to get fixed. I wanted things to get better.

56 INT. KEN'S DORM ROOM -- AFTERNOON

Andrew sits cross-legged on the floor, looking defeated, wearing the same disheveled

clothes he's worn for three days. Ken is sitting in a task chair, playing a video game.

ANDREW

(looks up at Ken)

Will things get better?

KEN

(pauses the game, thinks, answers without making eye contact)

Andrew, things will always get better. It just won't be the way you want.

There are words, I guess what fandom would call 'arc phrases,' that stick forever.

What I'd meant, obviously, was: would things ever get better between Tiana and I? Would we go back to the relationship we had?

What I got was something... more true... more crystal clear and honest than I ever could have wanted. It speared into my mind. It was a verbal slap of awareness to my mental face. I'm not sure I breathed for a moment as the implications of Ken's reply sunk in.

Tiana and I as a romantic and sexual relationship was over. That was a done deal. Ship is over the horizon. So far past the line that the line is now a dot. I needed to accept that. As much as I didn't want to, I knew somehow that I needed to.

It would take a while. I couldn't process it. So much of my default mode was oriented around spending time with her, that I couldn't comprehend social occasions that didn't involve being with her in some way. Even if I tried to force myself to move on by opening up a phone flirtation with intent for something in person with Winnie (the mutual who had warned me about Tiana's exploits while at school). That, blessedly, didn't go anywhere.

It would be the simplest, to me most normal, of things that I'd default to trying:

112 INT. LEIGH'S LIVING ROOM -- EVENING

Andrew is sitting on the edge of Leigh's couch, putting on his shoes. Leigh and Patrick

are standing, all three of them getting ready to go out to the video rental store to look

for anime.

LEIGH

(grabbing her purse, a horribly mistreated small denim thing)

I want to go to 7-11 while we're out too if that's ok.

PATRICK

Nachos?

LEIGH

Yeah. It's a law that I have to have nachos.

Andrew stands, having finished fumbling with his shoes.

PATRICK

(starting to move towards the door)

Cool, we'll find something and bring it back here; if we can't find anything we can stop by my house, I have some copies of stuff my friend made.

ANDREW

Okay. Leigh, can I borrow your phone? I want to call Tiana and see if she's free to join us.

PATRICK and LEIGH

(simultaneously, with force)

No!

PATRICK

(continuing, sharply emphasizing each word)

Seriously, man. That's not an option.

Andrew looks crushed.

Want a soundtrack? Go listen to "Antebellum" by Vienna Teng. In terms of mood and in many ways actual lyrics, it fits here in the space between this sentence and the end of this post, almost too perfectly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYb-cNOxe8w

I tried to keep managing to find ways to bring Tiana into things. Even when it wouldn't work out. Even when it was the worst idea possible. And then once day... I stopped.

I was angry. Very angry, for a long time. Years, literally. Even though we crossed paths a few times:

• A clear-the-air (not really) at Starbucks (which I have a conflicted relationship with). We walked around the parking lot talking; her, smoking a cigarette. I had issues with that, and I can't help but think it was deliberate. It ended with an impasse.

• Confronting her parents in an angry fit of vengeance and laying out all the T about what their daughter and I had been up to; replete with her father screaming me back off of the property.

• After I met my now-spouse, and was dating her, Tiana and her family were in the store I was working in. "I don't get it!" she exclaimed. "She's so... elementary school!"

• Years later, when I was helping babysit my... spouse's brother's girlfriend's sister's baby son. I was an ass. "See, Tiana? I told you I'd have made a good dad." (no, really, I was an ass).

I was angry at her for a long time. I turned her character in a story I was writing in my head into practically a demoness, and killed her off. I blamed every bit of my inability to cope with my own growing genderfluidity on her. I danced that line of negative intrusive thoughts daily.

And then one day... I stopped. Because I realized something.

If I'd stayed with Tiana, not only would I have probably become mentally worse off, I might very literally not be alive. I'm not saying I blame my suicidal tendencies on her; she doesn't deserve that. I blame them on me. But I'd have felt myself locked into such self-loathing that I don't even know what I would have done -- though, if I'd tried it once... maybe I would try...

If I'd stayed with her, I wouldn't have met my spouse (and there is a story in that, a much funnier one). Wouldn't have built a life with her. Experienced... our own personal history of joy and pain and determination that led to us adopting our two children. Being able to watch them grow. I wouldn't have had that path of maturity (as it is) to be where I'd wind up discovering and making realizations about myself, and who I was becoming.

In October 1997, on Ken's dorm room floor, that is not the 'better' that I wanted. Not the 'better' that I was hoping for.

It was the 'better' that I got, that I couldn't have predicted, and it is... so much preferable.

And time and time again, those words... keep coming up. Job issues. I wanted that to get better. They did, with better jobs. Infertility? It got better: we adopted.

There has not yet been one moment in my life, no awful period, that I have not thought about Ken's declaration and realized that no pain is permanent; no trouble too severe to move past. I have said it to many people. Maybe they've listened. I'll never know. But the truth remains:

Things got better. Just not in the way I wanted.

I have no complaints.

---

2022, March and Everything After (an epilogue)

Andrew: I'll be honest. I was angry for a long time. Angry and bitter, at you. And then... one day I realized that I wasn't, and that you were not necessarily the one that was wrong. And that it was unfair of me to be angry at you for having the power to decide what shape your life needed to be, when I didn't even know that myself.

Tiana: I'm going WAY philosophical here. Were either of us really wrong? You're right that I could choose my own future. But the issue at hand was a HUGE thing for you. Not something to trust another with lightly.

Tiana: You listening means more than I can express.

Andrew: Would you think you deserved any less from me?

Tiana: Perhaps. Our final parting was not... cordial. And I see that as my fault. Not yours.

Andrew: It was... a couple of things and cordial was not one of them.

Tiana: I know. And the not cordial part was entirely on me.

Andrew: I think you were entitled to your reaction to the things I said and did perfectly fine. I did... No, dearie, if anything it was both of us. I should not have told your parents what I did. Prior to that, I should not have allowed myself to get drunk enough that I was yelling at you from the window at [name of dorm hall redacted].

Tiana: Momma should have known that she couldn't dictate my life.

Andrew: ...and I should not have been a stuck up snide dick about things. Do I wish you'd have accepted me more? Yes. But I don't blame you. I took you for granted anyway.

Tiana: I never felt that you had.

Andrew: And somehow here I am and I've survived.

Tiana: If you and I hadn't experienced what we did, I wouldn't have been in a situation that led me to where I am now. And I suspect you wouldn't be, either.

Of note: it's been 25 years since that October trip. Tiana and I are friends again. We've spent the past few months trading stories of our adult lives: our marriages, our kids, our jobs. This is a very good place we're in. There is too much good in our past that we're choosing to embrace to otherwise let the bad we had weigh us down, and we were inside each other's heads too much to ever totally be divorced there. I have the utmost respect for her husband, and I am vicariously proud of her daughters. She feels the same about my spouse, and my kids. We are both absolutely utterly happy for each other, and acknowledge that the sufferings of our youth has been some of our greatest instructions on how to live (or not live) a life.

To you, Tiana. Had it not been for us then, we would not be us now.

And about that thought... things get better not in the way you expect?

We're friends again. How's that for proof?