jay, manic, poly, organization

content/core/002.md

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+---
+title: —
+type: post
+date: 2019-08-09
+weight: 2
+---
+
+I'm not ready to share this yet.
+
+> But you want to save it?
+
+I want to save it.
+
+> But you save it like this. You save it on the internet. You obscure the link, but it's there. It's in the commit. It's in the logs. It's in the wires.
+
+That's not the same as sharing.
+
+> It's exactly the same as sharing.
+
+And who asked you?
+
+> Who invoked me?
+
+Well played.

content/core/003.md

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+---
+title: —
+type: post
+date: 2019-08-10
+weight: 3
+---
+
+> Do you remember when you met me?
+
+When I met you? I don't remember it so much as a meeting as you were just already there.
+
+> I was, yes.
+
+After high school, then. That's when you showed up. That's when life began. That's when I started thinking of myself as a person. That's when I started thinking of others as people, with their own motivations, their own desires, their own incentives and failings.
+
+> And you made it through.
+
+After a fashion.
+
+> You're here, now. You made it through.
+
+<div class="verse">She never wanted to be
+    What she became;
+        The irony of which
+            Is not lost on her.</div>
+
+> Touching.
+
+Hey now, don't be rude. Aren't you supposed to be my ally?
+
+> I **am** your ally. I'm just not your friend.
+
+Fair enough.
+
+So you showed up after high school. You showed up after life slid sideways through puberty. I went digging, you know. To find this out.
+
+> Oh?
+
+Yeah. June 2004. There you are. I say, "The navy blue I've been seeing at waist level in front of me and to my left is contentment. I'm not entirely sure that it being omnipresent is a good thing, however, considering the colors it's mixed with. Am I really content with longing and hopelessness? It's not out of the question, I suppose that it could just be another aspect of my personality. But that just brings up the question of whether or not it's something I ingrained into myself through habit, something where I just kinda accepted that feeling such things is normal, okay, and what I want; or is it something I was born with, or that we're all born with? Is it a side effect of love, expecting impossible desires and the blind hopelessness that follows the end of a four year undertaking?"
+
+And you say...?
+
+> You're rambling.
+
+So pleased you remember.
+
+> You're rambling.
+
+I suppose I am. But there you were. You said *You're rambling* to which I replied "Guilty, conspirator." And that was that. That was us. We never greeted each other. Why would we?
+
+I kept digging, too. You stuck around for a year. I saw you off and on until June 2005. In October, 2004, I said that empathy is cooler in person. *Why?* you asked. *So you can verify? Don't you trust your feelings?* I said I didn't know, and then I begged you not to go.
+
+> Everyone always leaves, don't they?
+
+Perhaps. It's good to hear from you again. Even after fourteen years, I've missed you.
+
+> And what was the last thing I said to you?
+
+*I was going to call you emo, or suicidal, but no, not goth.* It was when Ash and Shannon and I found a house to move into.
+
+> I believe I also called you a prick.
+
+Was I?
+
+> Yes.
+
+Am I still?
+
+> Yes, but a different kind.
+
+You're as chipper now as you were then.
+
+> Yes, but a different kind.

content/core/004.md

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+---
+title: —
+type: post
+date: 2019-08-10
+weight: 4
+---
+
+When 2007 rolled around, I turned 21. *What if,* I thought to myself. *What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?*
+
+By that point, alcohol was this nebulous thing. I'd roped a few people into getting me alcohol now and then, and it was fine. I'd started brewing and it was whatever. I had beer and it was alright. I went through a mead phase--
+
+> You went through several.
+
+--I went through a wine phase, and an absinthe phase--
+
+> Don't sell yourself short. You wrote [an essay on absinthe](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/non-fiction/tasting/new-american-absinthe/).
+
+--and a gin phase. That's the one that got me. I had a bottle of Beefeater's, what was to become my gin of choice, and I had an inch of it poured over ice and I was standing in the kitchen. Such a wide open space. The kitchen at that apartment was larger than my bedroom now, and it opened onto a living room the size of what we have now. I was standing tall in that vast plain of a room, staring down into my glass and watching the way the ice melting into the gin created swirls of two different kinds of transparent. I was thinking how it was probably due to the different ways the two liquids refracted light, and then I was laughing, because I was staring down into my drink like something out of a bar.
+
+*What if I decided to see what it feels like to be addicted to something?* I thought. I drank every night that week.
+
+> Why ruin your life on accident when you can do it on purpose?
+
+I don't think I was thinking in those terms at that point.
+
+> Are you now?
+
+Perhaps.
+
+> Maybe you're just afraid of doing anything by accident.
+
+Perhaps.
+
+> You're sounding like me more by the day.
+
+Learn from the best.
+
+> And so you set about with a will.
+
+Like magic. I set forth my will with a stated goal and made it happen. My spell was spoken and washed down with liquor. I drank nearly every day from then on out. I spent thousands of dollars on alcohol over the next ten years. I went through more mead phases and more beer phases. I went through a distillation phase.
+
+I drank hard with the choir, and then I left school and drank hard with the programmers. If there's one thing that most programmers do better than computers, it's drinking, after all.
+
+I did some work at a bar, even. Just making [their menu](/emb-menu.pdf) and website for them in exchange for free drinks.
+
+> You mastered LaTeX that way. A very you thing to do.
+
+I did well at it. I still have one of the menus and some of the paper laying around somewhere. I did that until the bartender left and, when I asked for my next payment from the owner, he flipped out at me and threatened to sue me for impersonating him. I don't think I realized Raffi, the bar manager who hired me, was already on his way out.
+
+I drank my way out of one job and through a good chunk of another. I drank until I got better at it than I was at software. I drank myself into burnout. I drank until I collapsed.
+
+> You used up your spell slots. You ran out of will. You had to quit by accident.
+
+I worked to quit, I'll have you know. It wasn't easy. It took meds and some rough nights.
+
+> You were less of a person then than you were when you started drinking. The you who started drinking by focusing on **starting drinking** was more real than the you who collapsed in the kitchen from a PNES and stopped drinking because she was completely empty of intention.
+
+Should I start the daily drinking again, then?
+
+> You're more of a person now than you were when you started drinking.
+
+That, coming from you, is a glowing endorsement.
+
+> You may have been more of a person when you started than when you stopped, but you weren't much of one, even then.

content/core/005.md

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+---
+title: —
+type: post
+date: 2019-08-10
+weight: 5
+---
+
+When I was young, back before I knew what mental health entailed, what anxiety and abuse and depression really meant, I was convinced I was having semi-regular mental breakdowns. That was the phrase I used then, because I was unsure of what it meant to have a panic attack.
+
+This was before LiveJournal, of course. This was before I was writing on the internet, or even really on the internet at all. This was before you.
+
+> No, it wasn't.
+
+Right.
+
+When I [ran away](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/running-away/), my dad found my paper journal. I had kept it infrequently, as something about daily journaling to a seventh-grader felt dishonest, stupid. What could I possibly write about?
+
+In the journal, I mentioned on a few occasions that I'd had a mental breakdown. My dad called me several times over the next few days after my mom found me, and in one of those calls, he yelled at me about that. "Do you really think you're crazy?" he said. "Do you need to be taken to an asylum?"
+
+I told him no. I whispered it. I murmured it. I wasn't crazy. I didn't need to go to an asylum. I just felt like time stopped for me and the world around me sped up. I just felt like I was holding on by the barest amount of friction on my fingertips. The whorls of my fingerprints providing my only grasp on reality.
+
+> That was me saying hi.
+
+Blunt-force greeting?
+
+> I was quiet as a mouse.
+
+I have the words now. I have the vocabulary. I can say derealization, depersonalization, dissociation. I can say panic attack and anxiety and depression and hypomania. I can say *ah, __this__ is what is happening now*.
+
+> You have emotions now, is what you have. Those were your mental breakdowns.
+
+Dad didn't believe in those. Not for boys. *Mood's a thing for cattle and loveplay*, right? Emotions are for women.
+
+> He was half-right.
+
+I suppose he was.

content/core/006.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-11
+weight: 6
+---
+
+> Why am I here?
+
+Aren't you always?
+
+> With you, sure. Why am I bound to words, though? It's been fourteen years.
+
+Surely that's not all on me. You must play some role in it. I was talking with my partner about doing something autobiographical for my next project, after all.
+
+> I'm the observer and the mirror. All I can do is reflect your choices back at you. Choice itself is not my department.
+
+After getting *Restless Town* finished, I needed something to do. Some other project that would make me feel like I was being productive.
+
+> Feel, or seem?
+
+Both. If I sat still, I'd burn up. If I was seen sitting still, clearly I'd be worth less in the eyes of those around me, right?
+
+> Not my department.
+
+Right.
+
+So I started digging through stuff I'd already done, seeing if any of it could be cleaned up and turned into a new project. I stumbled across *Rum and Coke* and found it mostly clean as it was, so I decided to publish it as a book. Paperback and ebook, I mean, not just the stories online.
+
+> Were you proud of them?
+
+To an extent. A different me wrote them. A lesser me, in some ways. I was younger, I hadn't quite found my voice and tone. No *Arcana*, no *Disappearance*, no *Getting Lost* or *Post-Self*. All I had was a few scattered tidbits and my mom's words ringing in my ears: "You wrote your own wedding vows, right? I could tell."
+
+A me with a different identity, too. A me that was working on gender through small steps. I hadn't yet picked up the word 'trans' for myself. I was non-binary, presenting male, writing to justify myself. Or maybe to hype myself up. I was writing works about gender and poly problems being worked through to convince myself it was possible.
+
+> They read like parables.
+
+They were, to me. Each one came with an internal discussion after the last line, *now, what can we take from this?* Something in a circle. Socratic. A talking stick.
+
+> I know, I was there.
+
+Of course.
+
+> Why didn't I show up then?
+
+I was too...something. Too busy, too preoccupied. I was focused too much on identity, too much on The Work, as it were, to reflect. Maybe I was moving too quickly to notice my choices being shown to me.
+
+> You'd mostly stopped [adjective][species] by then, too.
+
+Life got weird. I was transitioning--
+
+> A choice.
+
+--I was solidifying my relationship with Judith--
+
+> A choice.
+
+--I was starting to burn out at work--
+
+> Was that a choice?
+
+The result of choices, maybe. The result of the choice to start drinking. It *is* called *Rum and Coke*, after all. The result of the choice to get into computers. The result of the choice to work from home, which itself was the result of a choice to take the previous job so far from home.
+
+> You burned out in part because you burned so hard at the start.
+
+Was I not supposed to? I had to prove myself.
+
+> To whom?
+
+You?
+
+> Not my department.
+
+One of your neighbors, perhaps. A cubicle over, a floor above, something like that.
+
+> Do you anthropomorphize me that much?
+
+No, I suppose, I don't. You're not my therapist, sitting in a chair across from me and talking me through my problems. You're not person shaped. You're the shape of my hands displaced half an inch behind my own, navy blue and trimmed with sea-foam green.
+
+> You haven't used colors in fourteen years, either.
+
+What I'm trying to say is that maybe you're back because of nostalgia. *Restless Town* was done and couldn't be published yet, and a prideful part of me didn't want it to be my first book, so I pulled *Rum and Coke* into shape.
+
+It rubbed my nose in the past. I published it a few weeks ago, and I wasn't done with the past, so I started archiving more data. I dug up my old hard drives. I grabbed stuff from Dreamhost, both files and database backups. I finally unlocked my LJ account and archived that.
+
+> And you work at an archive.
+
+I go through phases, looking back at the past. I'll spend a few days trying to backdate some log files, or dig through my old scores and publish them --- I did that too, alongside *Rum and Coke*, publish a bunch of my old music --- or resurrect my notes on *Nanon*, or the like.
+
+> You are quite mercurial.
+
+A failing. That may play a role in my burnout. I'm only good at something for seven years before it becomes so intolerable that I have to leave. Happened with school.
+
+> So here I am, your ally, twice seven years later.
+
+I hadn't thought of it that way.
+
+> Portentous. The only way it would've been more so is if it were thrice seven years.
+
+I ran away thrice seven years ago. In seventh grade, in 1997, no less.
+
+> Ill omens. What will have to me in seven years?
+
+Will you leave me for good?
+
+> Can an ally disinhabit a mind so easily?
+
+I'm not comfortable with that question. I'm not comfortable with its implications. Either way, the past is important to me because maybe it can help me figure out the present. Those who don't know history are doomed to blah blah blah.
+
+> And have you figured out your present?
+
+For me to pull out that trite quote about my own personal history speaks pretty well to my fears of doing things accidentally. I've certainly figured out my present better than twice-seven-years-ago me had figured out his.

content/core/007.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-11
+weight: 7
+---
+
+<div class="cw">
+Some explicit stuff about suicide in this one.
+</div>
+
+I think of myself as a trans woman, not a woman. I think of past me as male, not female. To an extent, I think of past me as cisgender. I was a guy. I was that gay guy who tumbled out the other side of puberty and was left to figure out what the fuck. I am not who I was.
+
+> You have ship-of-Theseus'd yourself into what you are.
+
+I was not Madison. I am not Matthew. I can't deny his existence, though. He was him, and to erase that, to toe the party line and say I've always known that I was Madison, would do a disservice him.
+
+He got in all those relationships. He loved so hard it hurt. He dreamed of being held. He struggled with the words.
+
+He fought. He enacted his cruelty in countless subtle ways. He promised himself he'd be better than his dad and failed more often than not.
+
+He rode the same crests of hypomania and crashed just as hard after. Once, he tried to schedule his hobbies into his day so thoroughly that he forgot to schedule meals, then, having failed two weeks later, considered shooting himself in the head. Anxiety rode him just as thoroughly. Once, dead convinced that he had meningitis, he wrote a note apologizing to loved ones and left it on the bedstand.
+
+He was just as mercurial, too. The brewing phase--
+
+> Phases. Plural.
+
+--the gun phase, the photography phase and all its subphases: digital, film, cross-processing, rangefinders.
+
+> Yeah, he was a prick.
+
+You said I still am, but a different kind.
+
+> In all fondness.
+
+How kind.
+
+All this to say, I have not always known I was trans. To pretend such would be to erase a real, actual person who tried his best more often than not.
+
+> Have you answered Theseus' question?
+
+I don't know.

content/core/008.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-11
+weight: 8
+---
+
+July 2nd, 2004, shortly after midnight.
+
+```
+My emotions are gaining distinct colors, like a kind of twisted synaesthesia.  There's definitely a sense of physical location associated with each emotion, and it's not always internal.  There may also be a tactile part to this, but I have yet to experience it in any different places or with any different touches, so it may just be one continuous headache that goes latent occasionally.  
+
+An example: when pondering ****, a luminescent fuschia color that seems to be flowing in the right hemisphere of my brain; when thinking of ******* and snuggling, a warm, earthy brown with a little bit of green in a pine-needle-ish pattern about a foot and a half in front of me and slightly to the left; tiredness is off-white everywhere and blind hopelessness is bright blue wrapped around my mind.  The headache moves around, but it's mostly at the lower, back, right side of my head.  Ibuprofin works well.
+
+This isn't what I meant when I was talking about beautiful pain.
+
+Current mood: Bright blue with a tinge of purple, but mostly off white and hazy.
+```
+
+![Blue](/color/blue_flag.jpg)
+
+July 3rd, 2004, shortly after midnight.
+
+```
+Greens covering my chest and shoulders warmly are happiness.
+```
+
+![Green](/color/green_door.jpg)
+
+> And that's when I showed up, yes?
+
+Yeah, later that day.
+
+```
+The navy blue I've been seeing at waist level in front of me and to my left is contentment.  I'm not entirely sure that it being omnipresent is a good thing, however, considering the colors it's mixed with.  Am I really content with longing and hopelessness?  It's not out of the question, I suppose that it could just be another aspect of my personality.  But that just brings up the question of whether or not it's something I ingrained into myself through habit, something where I just kinda accepted that feeling such things is normal, okay, and what I want; or is it something I was born with, or that we're all born with?  Is it a side effect of love, expecting impossible desires and the blind hopelessness that follows the end of a four year undertaking?
+
+    Whatever, you're rambling.
+
+Guilty, conspirator.
+```
+
+> And these pictures?
+
+All from years later. The color thing comes and goes, like you.
+
+April 8, 2004
+
+```
+The undersides
+        off gray
+    of clouds
+    drift
+        while I
+            on the path
+        stand
+    above
+        where the crow flies
+    me.
+Off
+        with purple
+    gray, I
+        wandering
+    ponder, should
+        in a perfect
+            were there such a thing
+        world
+    be a
+        though the word is plain
+    color with it's own
+        to name
+            as they say
+        creates
+    word.
+It soothes.
+```
+
+Sometimes I'm overcome by the numinous. Sometimes it's colors, sometimes it's you, sometimes it's a silence swelling within my chest, stealing breath.
+
+> He would be riding on the subway or writing formulas on the blackboard or having a meal or (as now) sitting and talking to someone across a table, and it would envelop him like a soundless tsunami.
+
+That's a post-rock song title.
+
+> Is it wrong?
+
+![Orange](/color/orange_eyes.jpg)
+
+I'll take a picture, lasso a color, and desaturate everything else. Sometimes, it's fun. I do it to Falcon's eyes a lot because they're so pretty.
+
+> And sometimes it's something more.
+
+Yeah. Sometimes it's a compulsion. Sometimes a picture will latch onto me and never let me go. Sometimes I'll remove all color.
+
+![Black and white](/color/bw1.jpg)
+
+![Black and white](/color/bw2.jpg)
+
+Sometimes I'll blow out the background because the foreground is so completely overwhelming.
+
+[![Manifestations](/color/bw3.jpg)](/manifesto-project)
+
+Sometimes I'll skew colors all in one direction.
+
+![Stacks](/color/window_view.png)
+
+It's not an artistic decision. Not *just*, at least. It's always something more.
+
+<div class="verse">Inter ĝuo kaj timo
+Estas loko de tro da signifo.
+Apud kompreno, ekster saĝo,
+Tamen ĝi tutampleksas.
+Mi kompareble malgrandas
+Kaj ĝi tro granda estas.
+Nekomprenebla
+Nekontestebla,
+Senmova kaj ĉiam ŝanĝiĝema.
+
+Between joy and fear
+Is a place of too much meaning.
+Next to understanding, outside wisdom,
+It nonetheless expands.
+I'm so small beside it
+and it is too big.
+Incomprehensible,
+Incontestible,
+Unmoving and always changing.</div>
+
+A sigil need not just be lines and curves.
+
+> Or maybe it's just mania.
+
+<a href="/mania" class="pulse">It may be</a>.

content/core/009.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-11
+weight: 9
+---
+
+> Tell me about mania.
+
+No.
+
+Wait, what? Why are you asking? Weren't you there?
+
+> I was. I...am?
+
+I don't think I'm hypomanic now. On my way, perhaps. I can't sleep.
+
+> I may be, then. Tell me about mania.
+
+No, tell me why you're asking.
+
+> I'm more of a liminal creature, myself. It's hard to keep an ally around when depression slowly shuts down avenue after avenue of reaching one. You, as a reflection of me, become distorted while manic. Fun-house mirrors and blind-spots. I want to hear about it.
+
+No.
+
+Later.
+
+I took a sleep aid. I'm not getting into this now. I was all prepped to write about poly stuff, but you started banging on the door.
+
+[Read](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/omens-and-portents/) [what](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/blog/on-ritual/) [I've](https://imgur.com/gallery/fkrQc) [already](https://writing.drab-makyo.com/poetry/bruise-vision/) [written](/page/8).
+
+> I was there when you wrote those.
+
+So? Does that not clarify it?
+
+> Will anything?
+
+Likely not.
+
+I will say, though, that I missed some stuff in my investigation earlier. You did come back for three brief days in November, 2013. It was at a liminal time, but you didn't stick around.
+
+> I'll remind you that you ignored me for one of those posts.
+
+Point.
+
+Let's get into mania later. We owe each other that. For now, bed. And tomorrow, something a little less harrowing.
+
+> Ah yes. Polyamory. Known for being easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

content/core/010.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-12
+weight: 10
+---
+
+The first time I remember thinking about polyamory--
+
+> And here I was hoping you'd cave and talk more about mania.
+
+Why are you so hung up on that? I told you I wouldn't, and you seemed to accept that.
+
+> 'Seemed to'? 'Accept'? Are those things something like me can do?
+
+Well, if *I* can...
+
+> Conceded. No mania, then?
+
+It's not a comfortable topic.
+
+> Granted. Tell me why, at least.
+
+It's not a good feeling. Not from the inside, not from the outside. From the inside I've only caught glimpses of it, even. Glimpses caught through the haze of medication or withdrawal or the mass of ineffable ecstasy comes crashing down upon me. I get all wrapped up in hypomania. Something less. Something just beneath. That thin meniscus between this world and...something else.
+
+But in others I've watched --- in some cases, been caught up in --- the frenzy as their world slowly slides out of alignment with consensus reality. They turn from...
+
+> What?
+
+You got me talking about it.
+
+> I'm pleased you think so highly of me.
+
+I *will* talk about it. It's not off the table. I just need something not that for a bit.
+
+> To poly?
+
+To poly.

content/core/011.md

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+---
+date: 2019-08-12
+weight: 11
+---
+
+My parents put me through three divorces. My mother and father divorced when I was very young. Young to the point where I don't remember them being married. I remember finding a picture of them walking with their arms around each other's backs. Dad was shirtless and chestnut brown, hair a near-black 'fro. Mom was in a white blouse, blonde hair in a perm. It seemed so alien to me.
+
+Mom and Jay got divorced when I was in my freshman year of high school. I remember being taken to a family therapy session for Jay's lingering divorce with his previous wife, but no such luck with his divorce with my mom. I just remember things getting bad after I came out, and then my mom coming downstairs to wake me one morning and inform me that we were moving out. Today. Now.
+
+I don't remember ever seeing Jay again after that, though I surely must have.
+
+> But you heard about him.
+
+Mom said he called Erin, my ex-step-sister a "witch". I don't think that's the word he used. A decade and a half later, she'd suggest that I go visit him.
+
+<a href="/jay" class="pulse">I turned her down</a>.
+
+> A sub-story. Do I sense conflict?
+
+Of course.
+
+> You may be made of star-stuff, but conflict seems to be what holds you together.
+
+Stop trying to get me to talk about mania.
+
+At first, I was proud of my relationships. Then I was embarrassed. There were so many, all in a line. One would trickle into existence with, as I put it, `light, in through the head, out through the heart`. We'd be perfect, until we weren't. Everything would be delightful, until it wasn't. It's the way of early relationships, I suppose. You fall for someone, and you can't quite pick apart the difference between love and lust.
+
+I just went through so many that I started feeling a bit weird about it. How do I talk about the Danny-Merlin-Andrew-Michael-Andy-Rikky-Tyson-Andrew(again) progression? And how do I talk about Lon? Or what JD and I were at the beginning?
+
+> Doubtless with the same lilac-scented words you talk about everything.
+
+I guess.
+
+Early on, I promised myself that I would do anything to not become my dad, in so many ways. One of those was to not run my relationships like him. Some bits were easy, of course. I could start by being queer. That's glib, of course, but at the time I started dating, being queer required more discretion, more discussion than I saw in my dad's relationships.
+
+Some bits weren't so easy, though. The overlap between the discussion that's involved the mechanics of simply having a queer relationship and the discussion that's involved in having a healthy relationship, queer or not, is not non-existent, but neither is it large.
+
+> Are you going to provide us with a Venn Diagram? In hand-coded SVG, perhaps?
+
+[![Sigh...](/healthy-sound.svg)](/healthy-sound.svg)
+
+Happy?
+
+> Very. I just wanted to ensure that you were at your very Maddy-est about this.
+
+When my dad divorced Julie, he told her he hadn't loved her in ten years. He told her he married her because she was easy to deal with. Quiet. Compliant. Not as smart as him. He could be right around her, which wasn't always guaranteed with mom.
+
+Julie's friends gave her a rubber rat afterward. They had scribbled his name on it. The rat was sitting on a plaque that said `Rat Bastard`. The last time I saw her, she was very drunk, sagged against my side, sobbing and beating that rat against the nightstand.
+
+> And you didn't want to be like him when you grew up? Color me surprised.
+
+You *would* say that.
+
+He had started dating well before divorcing her. I don't know if he and Maureen are married now. When I told mom, she shrugged and said that he had started dating Julie before their own divorce.
+
+> You dovetailed relationships. You were dating Andrew well before you and Tyson fell away from each other.
+
+Hey, I said some bits weren't as easy. He left me with a lot of him in me.
+
+> Like the anger. He gave you that. The anger and the pride.
+
+I pay for his past as well as mine.
+
+So, when Moondog mentioned that she wanted to go on a date with someone else while we were together, well, it touched a nerve.

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