Perhaps a glimmer of acceptance?

3 spectacular days without tears!!!  I'm on a roll!!  I even went so far as to put in contact lens, do my hair and my make-up!  That was taking a big chance.  If you wear contact lens you've probably experienced what happens when you cry.  It's like looking through a foggy window for the rest of the day, not to mention how lovely your mascara looks rolling down your face.

The sting of mascara rolling into your contact lens is only one step below being pepper sprayed.  The contact lens you're trapped wearing make you wish you could remove your eyeballs.  Unlike the foggy car window that you can attempt to wipe clean with that old dirty rag, there's nothing you can do about those lenses until you get home and take care of business.

But it was a successful day!  It was day three of no tears, and I was able to talk about 'it' with my love.  It was hard to get words past the teenager.  She was trying to block me as if I had the basketball in hand, but I was able to deke around and get past.  She's just too slow for me.  One day she'll learn that.

Sometimes, when my emotions are so strong, it's hard to tell exactly what I'm thinking.  Or even what I'm feeling.  In response to the question about sex, all I could say to my love was that I was stressed about it.  At first I couldn't put into words the depth of my feelings.

They were so far down that pit that I wasn't going back in to drag them out!  Hell no!!  You crazy?!?!  It's cold and dank down there.  Why would I want to go down into that concealed place, when I've had 3 glorious days playing in the sun?

Well, I managed to bring a flashlight down into the eerily empty hole and searched every crevice until I recovered all I could on that one topic.  It was hard to see down there, so I had to be careful not to grab things that looked similar, but really had nothing to do with the issue.

Sex.

My love's body hasn't changed yet.  My love still looks and feels the same, but it was that smell.  Papi has been so diligently cleaning that perfect body so that I will have some peace around the atmosphere that is inhabiting our lives.

Papi can't smell it of course, so it's confusing for mi esposo.  The gesture of cleaning that heavily tattooed casing and leaving a manufactured scent is my love's way of proving respect in this marriage.

So, I had to buck up and do my part.  Ok teenager with the pouty face and arms crossed in an effort to physically hold in as much as you can, I'm sending you to go find some binge food.  That'll keep you busy for a while.  Mmmmm ... power cookies ...

I told my love about my mind reeling while having sex.  That I couldn't just be in the moment and enjoy our bond, because I was too busy fighting off the thoughts that fragrance dragged along with it.  I had to keep saying to myself, this is only a smell, it hasn't changed the person who is here.  This is the same person goddamit!!!

During these thoughts, there's no way that someone can fully be connected and in the moment.  So, stress sets in and sex becomes work.  It should never have to be work.

It took a lot of effort when I was still in the closet.  Living my lie was part of the madness of steering my addiction down the road I traveled.  I definitely took the wrong exit off that lonesome highway.  I was really lost in some bad areas of town I had no business being in.

I only dated people who would give me free booze and drugs.  Then that way I'd be so fired up on chemicals that I could pretend that I was enjoying myself in the sack, when really, I had no clue what was going on half the time.

I harmed myself in so many ways by doing this.  I've known that I was gay since I was about 13.  Living through all those years of witnessing my family members' homophobia, I remained in the closet and dated the male species.

I did so many things in my life just to appease the family.  The nuns, the alcoholics, the fat-phobic, the mother who would never show me the acceptance I tried so hard win, the father who could care less that my sister and I existed.

I finally dealt with it all.  I got over all the damage I did to myself and I loved myself enough to be who I needed to be, or die.  I got clean and sober, I got on medication that helped keep away the demons who wanted the past to erase the present.

But my once upon a time has crept in and made a mess of my happily ever after.  While smelling the scent of a stranger, yet still being able to feel my soul mate's smooth, voluptuous body, my mind reels.

My love is making an effort in working with the first change in this journey of male transformation.  It's my turn to square the accounts.  We can't have anything in the red.  Papi has removed the scent leaving me to deposit my work.  It's gotta balance out!

I'm not sleeping with the enemy.  I have to remember that the person I'm so fortunate to have in my life is still that perfect butch I married.

This the first change in my love that I have to accept.  Papi has climbed the stair and is extending that strong hand to help me up.

There will be more evolving, but I have to remind myself that these things aren't happening yet.  Right now, I just have to accept the first wave.

That's all.  Right now there is no more than that.