I can't talk about him on DeviantART. I've taken down the link from there to here as well. Too many Texans over there who occasionally take notice of my work; they don't need to know that he's here.

As for you, my loves, my court of few and near and dear who know that this record exists, I hope you'll keep his secret. It's very important to me. You could say it's essential.

Having him here is beautiful, and wonderful. And vexing, and exasperating. Everything I am and have ever been is coming into play, everything I've ever seen and done, everyone I've ever known. All of this informs the decisions I make, the conclusions I draw with regard to him. I feel as if I'm seeing my whole life through a prism of sorts, refracting the past over the present and folding them together around the future in the hope of producing some kind of clarity. It's not always the most direct way of understanding something, but it's an educational and spellbinding process.

I love him more than he wants to be loved, sometimes. This is difficult. I want to reach out when I can't, want to touch when I shouldn't, want to say what he doesn't want to hear. Sometimes I do. The truth is that I am doing and will do a lot of things that frustrate and annoy him, which is fine. I expected to. I intended to. Most of the people in his life are very independent sorts, who tend to let everyone do their own thing. This is a decent way to live as far as it goes, but the fact is that, as a mode of family life, it leaves a person subconsciously feeling that no one really gives a damn what they do. When parents are cloying and clingy, or overbearing, or demanding, we hate it, we do, but it also says something to us. It tells us, on a deep, unconscious level, that these are people for whom what we do makes a difference. They say that they nag us because they care, and although we hate to hear that and it sounds like bullshit, underneath we feel its truth. The more they bitch at you, the more they make it clear that, if nothing else, what's happening to you makes a difference to them. It matters. They notice.

If parents are hands-off, if they believe in independence for their children, if they believe that their kids are strong and smart enough to do their own thing without supervision, that breeds smart and strong kids. People, especially children, act the way they are treated. You treat a kid like an adult, he'll act like one. So independent parenting makes independent children. But over a long period of time, it also makes children who act out, because your mom might let you do whatever you like, trusting that you're mature enough to make the right decisions, and she might be right, but subconsciously it makes you feel just a little like maybe what you do doesn't matter to her. So you push, and you flail, and you hurt yourself to see if that gets her attention.

This is basic psychology. I know that he hates it, so I don't bring it up. It doesn't especially matter, is the thing. The underlying information doesn't matter. It's what I do with it.

So I am doing what no one else in his life ever has: nagging. Paying too much attention to him. Irritating him with my need to know that he's okay, with my desire to know what he's thinking and doing and wanting. It grates on him because he's used to being left alone, but every day I reinforce it, it also tells him that I care. I care enough to go out of my way to find out what's going on in his head. I care enough to risk his anger to know that he's fine. I'm not trying to convince his conscious mind of this. He knows it, whether he believes it or not. But it will never sink in, it will never do any good, until his subconscious gets the message. Until there is no conclusion he can draw than: this girl cares about me.

That said, I also need to let him help himself, because he is capable of that. He's not broken, he's not sick, he's not insane. He doesn't need a doctor or a nursemaid. What he needs is a family.

He and I share the belief that the family you're born into means very little. You might love them, they might be great, but the family that really matters, that really shapes you, is the one you create for yourself out of your friends and the people that you choose to surround yourself with. This is the kind of family he needs now, and it needs to function the way it should: being simultaneously caring and permissive, letting him have his space but invading it just enough to make it clear that his contribution is not only expected, but necessary.

He had something of an epiphany yesterday, or so it seemed to me. I've never been so proud, so relieved. This is the hardest part, as he says. This beginning, these first few months, have been, are, and will be harder than anything else. Knowing that, I can't help but be optimistic. This hasn't been nearly as hard as I was prepared to deal with. I mean, come on. I was ready for the possibility that I would have to call paramedics every other day, and clean blood off my tiles. Instead I have to refrain from being over-affectionate and change my desktop background every fifteen minutes? Woe is freakin' me.

This isn't as coherent or conclusive as I'd like, but it'll do. You guys know what I'm saying anyway.

Labels: Hope, Jeremy