The Chronicles of Australia Part One

Pre-FrontalExplanationland

As you can see, I haven't uploaded in any blogs ages. that doesn't mean I haven't been writing, I just haven't been uploading. I'm not going to be around much longer and I'd like to tell my story even if it's not in order and even if not everyone likes it.

I've not even uploaded since D left Canada for Australia.

So I'll start there.

This is Part 1 of 3 parts.

These are The Chronicles of Australia


Preface: With all due respect, I am going to say that calling Soph in this context is not intending to disrespect her, her female gender as a trans woman, or any non-binary people, but I was with a male person named Daniel. I've come close to having girlfriends from time to time but never have, I'm simply not attracted to women sexually. So when I talk about Daniel, I'm talking about the person I loved, the person dated and was engaged to. Daniel would never do the things Sophia did, and if they were the same person, we would have worked it out and I would be married to Sophia. But that’s not what she wanted when she moved into Daniels body. From my perspective, in many ways they are two different people.

I miss Daniel and I grieve for him. It's a different kind of grief than I had when John died- in some ways it's harder and more confusing because I know the kind, sensitive, empathetic and loving person is still there somehow.

Please don't conflate what I am doing here as "dead naming". It is how I've needed to cope with what happened. I am and will always be an ALLY, even if others won't be an ally towards me.

One more thing: this is highly abridged, and it is my perspective. Clearly Soph has things that she remembers that might be different. She is of course entitled to her opinions and what see does with her own history.

I wish her well in the future.

Albatross

As some of you know, Daniel came out as trans and is now Sophia, which shouldn't have been a problem, but when she became Sophia she decided that she couldn't date anyone but another trans woman so once again I came to a point in my life that my existence as a person was a problem. This is what happened from my perspective as it happened.


It took me 6 years of knowing her and her convincing me she loved me and would never leave me to have me consider coming to Australia.

I asked her many times is there was ANY reason why I shouldn't come here and was clear that it was a serious question because I'd have to sell my house, re-home Pteri, sell everything I could, donate the rest and I would need him to fill in the places where I needed help and was unable to manage things for myself- huge Swiss cheese holes in my life from my learning disabilities, from being neglected and not knowing how to manage things that most people my age seemed to be able to figure out, and help with thing I just couldn't manage any more because of my spinal injuries. I asked the question time and time again in different wording and at least three times in obvious clear, concise words:

"Is there ANY reason at all that you can think if that I should not move to Australia to get married to you?"

"No, I want you to come here, I love you, we will get you help here, my family will also help, we'll get you better, I love you". I felt insecure but I trusted him and that he was being honest. I loved and trusted him like I'd trusted no one before in my life- intelligent, seemed stable, supportive in ways that I've never seen before, he loved my jokes, he were that kind of couple where we could finish each others sentences and know what the other was thinking. Daniel had never experienced that before and was amazed by it

The house didn't sell as fast as we would have linked, in fact it didn't sell at all. I don't know if what's-her-face wanted a signature in blood but no matter how many times I asked she never listed the fucking thing. I was stuck. I couldn't go home because I'd taken alone against the sale of the house to GET there.

Blue-ringed octopus

It wasn't even 6 months before Daniel started to morph. He became more and more irritable (a tiny studio is way too small for two introverts and Daniel had never lived with anyone except his own family- he didn't understand that other families had different rules, values, and so on and so he conflated some of the ... lets use the word "unique" things about his family with "being Australian".

Once Daniels mom realised I wasn't a walking talking baby oven, the passive aggression started and I didn't want to be a pain and I was really shocked at how dependant Daniel still was on his mommy at his age. He was not like this in Canada, but back under the gravitational influence of his mom, the sun, he was malleable putty in her hands and she could manipulate him with a glance or with the cadence in her voice.

The hostility started to leech into the apartment, Daniel would get furious if I made "too much noise". The result too much noise would be caused by the following but not limited to 20 to 45 minutes of haranguing about:
- vigorous typing or clicking the mouse "too much"
- plastic wrap of food packaging crackling
- metal spook clinking the side of a cereal bowl or mug.





Cassowary

He stayed up all night on the computer (I now realise it was spending Second Life with someone new - I did ask if he was cheating and he said "no" but I maybe could have been more specific and said that I meant online sex). Because of this, he wouldn't go to bed till 7 or 8 am and the apartment had to be silent and dark till about 2-4pm or even later when he decided to get up.

He became cruel, didn't help with the housework, blamed everything on me, and kept drawing lines in the sand creating hostility when we should have been working together to be a stronger couple. I was fucking terrified. I didn't understand what was going on.

He would want to "talk" about what was going on and so did I, but he had rules: he got to talk, I had to stay silent, not "interrupt" and not get to say anything. If I did dare say anything, he "would have to start at the beginning again" because it was a fucking lecture he'd prepared or something. That wasn’t talking, it was a critical laundry list of abuse. It was Chinese Water Torture with really insulting patronising insults. It would go on and on and on and in any other kind of home a person would be able to go out to another room. All I could do was put n my noise reducing headphones and try and tone him out.

A couple of times he ripped them off my head and it would bend my ear painfully because of my neuropathy in my face nerves. Once he grabbed my laptop and posed like he was going to throw it out the window of our apartment on the third floor down to the asphalt in the back alley. I was terrified: My art, my photos, my contacts, my writing, my medical files- he was about to destroy all of everything. Of course later he downplayed it and said he would never do such a thing, that he was "kidding" and I should have known he would never do that. But there were other things of mine that he HAD broken, and his point of getting my attention wouldn’t have been effective if I didn't honestly believe he was going to do that. Later, after he'd broken something that appeared small and like something that could be easily replaced (it wasn't), he admitted that he gets feelings of rage and will just sash the first thing that he sees regardless of whose it is. That is a sign of a very dangerous person, who knows what happens to a partner of someone that loses their shit that much. That is how partners get killed.

One day the phone rang at 12:50 pm in the afternoon. It was a wrong number. Daniel was annoyed that the phone woke him up but he didn't say anything. The phone rang again, it was the same person making the same error again. I said it no problem and I went back to the futon and back to my cereal. Apparently I was intentionally and enthusiastically clinking and clanking the spoon on the bowl like the drummer from Hüsker Dü a million zillion times super loud just to annoy him because he started tearing into me verbally about making all this noise when he needed so badly to sleep. We got into this things about why doesn’t he just go to bed at a normal time, blah blah blah. He got into comparing me to his mom (a common topic) and I said I'm not, never will be, and am not interested in becoming anything like his mom, nothing wrong with wanting to be my own person and he needed to grow up and untie the apron strings or something along that line. He totally lost his shit and leapt out of bed and grabbed my neck and started choke-holding me from behind and shaking me by the neck and milk and cereal was going everywhere and dribbling on my laptop keyboard and I was trying to hold everything steady and going "Stop! What are you doing! Stop it now!" and his clock alarm thankfully went off and he snapped out of it. It was set for 1 pm. All that for 10 fucking minutes of extra sleep. I was starting to wonder where I could go if things got Dan S. Level of psycho-danger.

Drop Bear

16 months was too long to stay in a studio apartment with someone who was getting more and more hostile and abusive in stages. He was becoming mentally and emotionally more and more childish, he was saying "this is your mess not mine" - like when I lived with others, the person who prepared dinner that would be their job, and the other would do the clean up. Not with young little Danny Boy. He NEVER cleaned the toilet "he didn't know how". In fact "he didn't know how" to do a bunch of things. It was clear that his mom was coming up the 3 hour each way drive and and doing things like cleaning and defrosting the fridge and cleaning the toilet and all kinds of things. He didn't know you had to wash the mop and broom and cleaning things periodically. He didn't like that the dish towels were getting used looking with age, so I bought my own that I could do whatever with. The he started to get mad because too may extra things were coming in the apartment and I was "a hoarder" because I'd keep and reuse reusable containers rather than making landfill fodder. I really tried to encourage ecologically friendly cleaning- not wasting paper towels when it was necessary, etc and he thought it was stupid. When I'd made dinner so it was "my mess to clean up". He wouldn't clean the bathroom because "my shampoo bottles were in the way" because it's so hard to move something for a minute while you wipe it. If I carried his dishes to the sink after dinner then they would be "my mess", it was right fucking out of control.

I said we need couples therapy and we went- it was awful because as soon as Daniel started talking about how much he adores his mommy, the therapist got moo eyed and it was stupid. She said Daniel needed to find other outlets for his temper and that breaking my things and threatening to smash my laptop was inappropriate (enter "I was just kissing" mode) and that I did need a place to have a desk and draw and not have to always eat balancing on my knee as soon as possible. He took that to mean "after the move". He warped anything people said to suit himself. She was right, though. Daniel definitely needed some physical activity to take up all that pent up aggravation. He'd continuously blame me for his feelings and had no self control over his emotions and they were always someone else’s fault. I had offered to teach him how to ride a bike for example (there are lots of places around that even rent out tandem bikes, that would be great to teach an adult with, but he was too ashamed to start learning anything where people might see him learning, in his imagination people would be laughing at him and it would be unbearable.

The rudeness and the bulling kept getting worse and I dealt with it the only way a person who has been abused their whole life can: stay quiet, do what they want, try and make them happy. He expected me to pack his suitcases but he didn't SAY that, he just kept putting it off till the last minute (I had been reminding him to pack for over 24 hours then it was 1/2 n hour till he had to leave for the air port and I caved and packed for him as he had tantrums all around me for not being fast enough. I found myself doing ridiculous fucking things like tying his shoelaces for him while he was yelling at me that I wasn’t doing it fast enough.

It was insanity.