I went for a relatively brief walk, but I did get outside, which was the goal. And walking a few blocks is better than not walking any at all, which is what I would have been doing otherwise. I would have gone further but there was something in my boot, which was hurting my foot and it was much more windy than I expected and I quickly got something in my eye! But that’s 3 days out in a row. Tomorrow might be difficult as the forecast says rain, but I’ll try anyways.
When I got home I took some pictures. I constantly need more pictures, which this place helps keep me on top of. I’m hungry. I’ll have something. I’m trying to lose weight. And I just weighed myself. The last time I was weighed I was at somewhere around 220lbs. I’ve lost 15 pounds since then! But I’m still so much heavier than I used to be. And while taking photos I tried to put on a leather shirt that my friend Paul gave me decades ago, but it didn’t even come close to fitting. It was always snug, even when I was at my thinnest, but it was shocking to see by how much I couldn’t close it! I know that I was unhealthy when I was thin, and that I’m probably better off now, but I’m keen to find the happy medium, where I’m thinner but still healthy. I think I’m doing the right things, having made so many little adjustments to my diet and obviously getting out more means moving more which means more exercise. So I’m probably doing very well actually. I know that I’m eating far less sugar and salt and fat, so this can only lead to happier results at my doctor appointments.
That I can think about these things without being triggered and freaking out also shows how far I’ve come. That inner terror has been closer to the surface but so far I’ve been able to fight it off. And that feels good too.
Though, here comes another migraine to make my day less pleasant. My medication will be shipped soon, so hopefully that helps. I wonder if this is because of the storm that it moving in? What does it matter? I think I have every migraine trigger known to exist! At least I excel at something! I guess I’ll get ready for bed. I can finish Daredevil tomorrow.
I did not sleep well Friday night. Sometimes I’m fine on my own. Others, it’s hard to sleep without Aaron there. Also, I have psychological stuff that pops up now and again. When I was a kid I used sleep on the floor, in front of my sister’s bedroom door. I thought I was protecting her and I would fight to stay awake. That comes back to me as an adult and I resist sleeping. It’s why sleeping pills are such a temptation for me; because I don’t even think about sleeping and I’m out like a light. I only slept 4 hours. But I also took the night off of Zolpidem / Ambien, which meant that I could take it without guilt on Saturday night. Any decrease in Ambien consumption is a win and I’m doing better controlling that then I have in years.
Saturday, I got up early and worked on my website about half of the day. The other half I was fighting off a recurring migraine I’ve had for about a week. I get those a lot this time of year. Well, anytime of year really, but I’m on Aimovig, which cuts the number of migraines I have in half. I used to have them almost every day and now it’s a couple of times a week, occasionally less, which probably sounds horrible to most people, but to me, it’s like a vacation! But this is a particularly bad time of year for my migraines and this is clearly a cluster. So that bit sucked. I gave in and took my meds. I have an inhaler that helps with most of my worst migraines but it has negative side effects so I don’t take it unless I need it. But that didn’t help. I took a scalding hot shower and also took some Ibuprofen and Tylenol Migraine and eventually they helped, but I could tell the migraine was still there, beneath the surface.
Later I rewatched one of my guilty pleasure movies, “Claire of the Moon”. A lesbian drama film with some questionable acting choices. It’s not a great movie but I love it so much. It was the right call. I last watched it about 6 years ago. And I’ll likely see it again someday. It’s a comfort movie for me. Also, I’m trying to revisit the movies I watched but didn’t write much about during my LGBTQ+ movie marathon that began in 2020; some of those movies were viewed before I started reviewing them and others I just didn’t get around to writing. But now that they have a home here, I will try to stay on top of it, which should be pretty easy. I’m not watching 5 or 6 a day anymore and also, I don’t have to keep track of them as much, so once I’ve transferred all the reviews from Facebook, I can take my time, have fun and not worry about getting it all right.
I went to bed around 10pm. I slept until around 7. Friday night I had dreams that I was at Meijer and that Lisa and Emily Murray were there with Aunt Karen. Last night I dreamed that I was seeing a Spider-Man film with Janice and her kids, and as we left, Tom Holland and Zendaya were with us – and I actually think Tom was on one of Janice’s kids. There were also dreams that I was living on a boat with Aaron / Mark. A whale had crashed through the boat and I was surveying the damage, the whale still in the hull. Later I learned that Aaron / Mark had imprisoned the whale to pull us to our destination and was so angry. I was telling him / them that if the whale died that I would never speak to him / them again when I woke up. The latter dream seems heavily influenced by Doctor Who’s “The Beast Below” (S05E11) but I haven’t even thought about that episode in years so I’m not sure why that popped up here.
I want to lose weight. Which is not something I’ve really had to contemplate much in my life. Growing up, I was relatively thin due to PTSD tied into eating. And in my late 20s my stomach became partially paralyzed, which I’ve struggled with ever since. 9 years ago, I was a little under 164 pounds. I weigh over 200 pounds now. I think I weighed 220 for awhile and maybe I still do? I’m a little afraid to look. I’ve recently changed my diet for the better, dropping ice cream and replacing ice cream shakes with smoothies, with each ingredient being much healthier than the ingredients in the shakes. I also stopped eating a type of of pizza (pretzel crust) which was delicious but had more salt on it than was healthy; it even included a health hazard warning! I’ve also stopped eating bacon and peperoni, which I was eating often before. I’ve not sworn off these foods but I’ve made it a point to not eat them on a daily basis. I’ve also drastically reduced my intake of potato chips. I still get them once or sometimes twice a month, but for many years I had them every single day. I have fruit every day. I have veggies often. All that is to say that I’ve made some really good dietary choices. But I need to start exercising. If I could, I would run, but it’s very high impact at a point in my life with that seems really not good for my body – and it would likely aggravate my stomach. I’m leaning more toward stair climbing, hiking and taking more walks. And if I can find something a bit more heart intensive that works for me, that would be wonderful. I miss dancing but there are no clubs near me that I enjoy and while I can dance at home, it’s not easy when I’m rarely on my own.
I need new shoes. Good comfortable shoes for walking / hiking. The shoes I have now are nice but I got them in 2021 I think and I’ve since walked many miles in them, all around the world: Belize (Harvest Caye), England (London), France (Marseille, Nice), Greece (Athens, Mykonos, Olympia, San Torini), Honduras (Roatan), Malta, Mexico (Costa Maya, Cozumel), Monaco (Monte Carlo), Italy (Florence, Naples twice, Pisa, Pompeii, Rome twice, Sicily twice, Taormina) Spain (Barcelona) + the United States: Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas (Galveston & Houston) – at least.
I had a smoothie this morning, which has mostly settled. I think I’m going to get ready and try to go for a walk.
I slept about 6 hours last night. I felt rested. When I got up I started working on a Marvel multiverse viewing order for my website but it’s slow going as I’m having to do the art and fill in information that I didn’t have before. I made a lot of progress though. But I’m struggling with something that has been bothering me for awhile, trying to figure out how to highlight essential elements vs. items included strictly for completionism. I’m also including (or want to include) supplemental materials for a more enriched experience, but I don’t know how to list those things in a cohesive manner. So, unlike other lists and entries I don’t have the pay off of publishing it because I’m not even close to being finished, so it’s just a saved draft for now.
And that sucked up hours of my day, which I hadn’t planned for. It seems beautiful out but I’m struggling with a migraine now, and the energy I had yesterday seems completely depleted. My own weaknesses are cropping up and I hate it. I’m not sure what’s going on with me today exactly, except that one of my new medications tends to stay in my system longer than I think it should. But it’s also helping me to not take Ambien every night and I only have 4 more doses so this problem will pass in time.
In the last 24 hours I’ve also tried to make notes about a possible third entry in my Sex Essays. I have tons of material to write about but I haven’t yet found a framework for the next entry; there’s no contextual outline or structure that might eventually entrap the next tale into a consistently harmonious telling. Once I find something, I’ll know, and it will likely flow relatively quickly. That’s how the first two entries worked, even if I did write them almost 10 years apart. I definitely want to get more written in the coming weeks and months.
Also, my conversations with Michael yesterday left me feeling a bit confused. There are elements of that relationship that have stayed with me ever since. Some of that is PTSD, which I have failed to conquer, although I have identified most of that and explained it to Aaron and my friends and family, so they can understand my reactions to things that seem like red flags, and they are, but they are warning signs for something that actually happened about 15 years ago, rather than anything that’s happening now. Part of me is stuck back there and despite my best efforts I just can’t free myself from that mess. The other part is a complicated sexual component that predates my 2 year relationship with Michael, but was greatly amplified by my experiences with him and then continued on long after we parted. It’s something that I’ve tried very hard to explore and understand, and sometimes I feel that I do. I feel like the work of understanding these things is important and that had I not tried I would have suffered more. I wish I had the foresight to have explored these elements of my personality years before, but I can only try my best. I will continue to explore this topic. Just talking about it here, it’s clear that there is much to write about, and perhaps that could help as well. I’m just not sure if I have any concrete conclusions to highlight in such a piece. But maybe that could be the whole point?
I miss Aaron. I’ve not had any meaningful conversations with him since Monday. I know that he’s very busy so I’m not too distressed about it, but when we spoke on the phone yesterday he seemed odd? I don’t know what that’s about and I’m not sure I will until we can talk about it a bit more.
Glenn sent me a message awhile ago. He said that he really likes Christian a lot, and that they had some fun conversations about me. But he didn’t explain. And I’m not sure what a conversation about me would entail. Glenn did say that my history would make a great play, and he also thought I should do standup, and I do genuinely love Christian, so I’m sure it was all innocent fun, but I’m left wondering what it all means.
I woke up with a migraine. I figured this meant it was raining and it does look like there was a storm. I guess it’s ironic that “Mandolin Rain” was stuck in my head before I went to bed! lol I wouldn’t have even remembered that except the title came up when I came to write this entry. I find it amusing at least.
I got up and took some painkiller. I was taking a lot of painkiller for a long time. I’ve cut way back because it often doesn’t help and is also bad for you, but sometimes I can’t even think of anything else. I’ve been getting migraines since the fourth grade. In order to qualify to be seen by a specialist in New York I needed to have at least 2 or 3 different triggers but as it turns out, I have all of them. My mother had them, often worse than me, I suspect, but she also had them less often, thankfully. So there’s a hereditary element. Then I also have really bad TMJ, which can trigger them. It’s fucked up actually because if I do anything with my mouth for long it starts to hurt. That means laughing, talking, eating / chewing and giving head can all hurt me and often do. Back in 2009 the tension in my jaw was so bad that my jaw locked for 3 months. The dental specialist I saw told me it would never open again, and then seemed shocked when I wept – that man had no fucking bedside manner. But I was able to see another specialist who got my jaw to open in a single session with some simple exercises. He explained that my jaw would be eve more sensitive after that point, as if I’d gotten a sports injury and couldn’t play football anymore. Changes in weather also trigger my migraines. Lack of nutrition can affect migraines and since I have a very complicated relationship with food under the best of circumstances + my stomach issues, it can be very difficult for me to get all the nutrition that I need and that’s been going on since I was 4 years old. Stress / tension can cause them and I definitely have those! But I really have worked to address each of these issues as best as I can. And because of that work I now have about half the number of migraines in a week than I used to have, and sometimes I even go more than a week without one, which I never thought would ever be possible.
Despite the migraine and my tummy being grumbly, I wanted to cuddle with Aaron for a bit, so I did that after taking the meds and putting ice on my neck for a bit. He knew I wasn’t feeling well but we were both grateful for the cuddles and we said as much when I eventually had to get up. We’re very affectionate. We always hold hands in public and often in private. We’ve had sex twice in the last week, which I think is pretty good since we’ve been together almost 15 years. It’s been a priority for me this year actually. We went for a long patch with almost no sex between November 2019 & 2025. We would do something every now and again, but age, our long relationship and the pandemic all had taken their toll on us. We were lucky to have each other during the lockdowns, but being together 24/7 we needed to find time for ourselves and learned to stay on opposite ends of our apartment to keep our sanity in check. It was hard to break that pattern once it was in place, and I’m not sure it is entirely gone, but we’ve made great strides on improving the situation. And our sex life is part of that. We’ve hooked up about 10 times this year so far, which is likely more sex than we’ve had in the last several years combined. We try to prioritize our relationship, is what I’m saying, and we generally have very positive results. And when we don’t, we are also very understanding and very forgiving. Hopefully this remains true.
After getting out of bed I immediately made a smoothie. Blueberries, chocolate Boost, protein powder, Benefiber, coffee grounds, and a splash of oat milk. I figured the caffeine might help and I think it has. Caffeine and pain killer. At least I feel better than I did. And for once, Aaron hasn’t turned on all the lights. Probably because he knows that my head is hurting.
Today is Aaron’s last day at home for awhile. He’s flying to Los Angeles tomorrow and he won’t be home until early Monday morning, nearly an entire week. I don’t mind being on my own, and I won’t be alone the whole time. My aide Celine is here between 4 & 6 every weekday, and I will try to make plans with some friends. I do sometimes have trouble sleeping without Aaron. Partially because it feels weird to not have his side of the bed occupied and partially because he’s such a stickler for his bedtime that it helps me force myself to sleep at a regular time instead of watching hours of TV in bed as I often end up doing in his absence.
I might work on getting some of my viewing orders here on Gothboy 2.0 – I’m still stumbling a bit with how to set this or that new thing up, but I’ve only been at this for 2 weeks. I seem to have this journal / blog thing down though, which is wonderful. I’ve missed doing this. And my Facebook posts only ever went so far. I’m actually hoping that having this website will help me break away from Facebook more and more. I’ve already begun transferring elements of my profile there to this new location. Wish me luck!
