Okay I’m not sure why I chose multiple categories or why those specific ones but here goes:

Living Numbly: Loving Before My Brain Could Love by Lilla K. Elteto/Jesse. Sunflame Christopher

Share away with this notice and the Copyright info at the bottom attached

Living Numbly: Loving Before my Brain could Love

by Lilla K. Elteto/Jesse Sunflame Christopher

Fight till the last gasp."

       William Shakespeare

Dedicated with love, respect, and peace to all members of All Saints Elementary (Portland, OR) class of 1994 and especially to the 3 young men who dared to show me they cared—their lessons are ones I’m still learning. Dedicated as well to all those who suffer or have suffered in silence or attempted to, no matter what their bodies’ or hearts’ gender, and to all who have blamed themselves wrongly for what they could not help. And dedicated, finally to the two people who not only believed in me more with their minds, but saw more deeply into me than anyone else I know long before I could see me:  to Allyson Metcalf, my  only adult teacher in the physical plane who showed me—and the Inner Collective of aspects I would eventually awaken to—how to be a heart, not just have one, and to the man who saw far past my outside—and into my heart—from the very first day of our meeting. He is the gentlest—and other than me, the weirdest—person of any biological or emotional gender that I’ve ever met. Said with a smile. He knows who he is. Love and peace, Lilla K. Elteto/Jesse Sunflame Christopher

Preface

 Peace be with you, dear reader. Let me begin by introducing myself in a more substantial way than a book cover will permit, as no one who isn’t a member of one of my Internet forums has yet heard of me. My name, as the cover shows, is Lilla K. Elteto and Jesse Sunflame Christopher—who is my inner consciousness’s Highest male Self, one whom I’ve been awakening to by slow degrees at my conscious level for the better part of a decade. Lilla K. Elteto is my birth and thus far still my legal name, and I am, I will admit, a Renaissance Geek and a bard: a singer, occasional poet and writer of spoof songs called filks, which are songs that put new and usually funny lyrics to existing songs to spoof them, and one who has struggled lifelong with the question of humility and what it means to hem. (A gender neutral pronoun of, as far as I know, my own invention, meaning him/her in one). I will not make any claims to humility because quite frankly, I’m no longer sure I have any rightful claim to that being appended to me, although I will admit to being as honest about my own shortcomings as I can be, albeit for the sake of my honor code and telling the truth, and that many have taken interpreted this as “humble,” but which I feel is just being honest. This, too, has been said with a warm smile to my good reader.

I have been a proud, self-proclaimed (and also occasionally self-acclaimed, I will confess) weirdo since I was a young child, when Lilla—or LillaKat as I call her, for she is highly feline in her inner emotional and mental behavior and around friends, in her personality—was my only conscious self and, as aforementioned, the “proud” part of that is, verily, one I have struggled with since I was much younger in keeping it free of “arrogance,” which I’m no longer certain of being truly capable of doing. I will, however, let my reader be the judge of that as s/he reads my tale.

 The story that follows is one that is as true in the telling as I—or more accurately, I my conscious social self and my inner Collective of personality aspects and guides, have been able to make it based on the knowledge about me and others that I have been able to piece together in retrospect—occasionally with the occasional aid of memories of those close to me or who knew or observed me well enough to share. Most of it, however, came from my own memories. Because it is mostly from my own recollection I feel compelled to add:

I am open to being mistaken about me and of course about others, or about not being fully informed about my “me-ness.” In fact, I’m sure I don’t remember absolutely all of the me that I was, and especially of that much of me that was visible to others. There was significant enough a piece of my brain numbed or closed off to my conscious heart-mind at the time that it is literally impossible for me to be one hundred percent certain in parts of the memoir what I was truly like—though in the parts where my memory is certain, it is painfully vivid indeed at times, a fact which led me for years to believe that I was incapable of forgiveness, since I was never able to forget any negative feelings I had experienced, much less the circumstances that triggered them. To anyone of my readers who remembers me and has a piece of the puzzle that I have been piecing together about me and where I have been as a person, you, milord or milady—said with a smile to all kindly readers, no matter what their background or income—are invited to share with me what you remember of me and write to one of the addresses I have provided at the end of the book, and help me to grow in love, appreciation, and understanding of me and, with your willingness, of you. Bows with a gentle smile.

Merely looking at me is not enough to show people who are not consciously intuitive what I am as a person, and I have learned just enough about what passes for “Normal” among humans that I can disguise my inner weirdo—and my slightly social-deficited self—enough to temporarily pass for it to those who don’t know me well. What I’ve been through, physically and emotionally, however, is fairly unusual, not so much in the content of it, but in the degree that it happened—and it is unusual for “normal” people of any biological or emotional gender, and also how it happened is fairly unusual.  It is the parts of my inner experience that have been uncommon to that of most which forms the main tale in this book. The inspiration for this book began as the result of a conversation I once had with someone to whom I had told a bit of my story. His remark upon hearing it was: “You should write a book about that.” The result is here in my gentle reader’s hands. I hope that if someone has been through a numbness as complete as mine was and lasted for as long as mine did, that this narrative may perhaps suffice to let hem (explanation of this word follows) know s/he is not alone. Before the reader proceeds to Chapter One, I would like to bring to attention one or two things that might otherwise prove confusing.

During this tale, I occasionally slip into anachronistic—meaning out-of-this-time—words or sentence structures—such as “good my reader” in place of “my good reader” where I use it and similar conventions, using them in such a way as to give you, dear reader, a small hint of the slightly Medieval-and-Renaissance spirit that is myself, without hindering the flow of the material or your ability to read it. I do this only for the sake of giving you as much of the “true me” as I know without stressing your language comfort levels too horribly, and I do it as seldom as I can for it to be enough to give you this sense. Another thing that would, without an explanation for it, prove awkward for my reader, is my use of hem. You, gentle reader, know this as a word betokening the edge of a garment. I, however, as I’ve mentioned before, use this as my combination word of him and her, and “hes,” as my combination of her and his. I use this both in referring to the general singular, (for which there has long been a need in English for a suitable way to express gender neutrality without sounding sexist to the modern Western English-speaking sensibility), and on the rare occasions when I refer to myself in the third person in the narrative, to do so in an accurate way, since emotionally, though not physically, I am strongly bi-gendered or gender-flexible in my heart, and have for the past few years identified as bi-gendered or androgynous (gender-blended). The word normally used for this is  “genderqueer”—a term which sounds vulgar to my admittedly haughty ears. I prefer the terms bi-gendered (which I was the first person in my awareness at least to use though not necessarily the first person ever) or gender-flexible—a term which I’m fairly certain I coined myself, and which I coined, not for the sake of being politically correct, but for the sake of being accurate with regard to expressing how I am. More detail on this—and where, gender-wise I have been awakening to and seem to be heading, in the text proper.

In order to reflect my gender orientation accurately when referring to myself in 3^rd person (which I do on occasion in the text),  and to avoid using either “his” all the time, (which at long last even to linguistic conservative me sounds sexist) and to avoid the troublesome “his and her,” I have used  the pronouns “hem” and “hes.” What you, good my reader, hold in your hands is the sum of my entire life, and especially my emotional and physical life, up until almost 7 years ago as of this writing. It is not a memoir of religious or spiritual faith—though, insofar as faith played a role in my emotional or behavioral life and was affected by the physical condition that formed the title of this book, it is, in some chapters, gone into at some length. They are however not, to borrow a cooking metaphor, the meat of the book—these sides of my journey simply went into the recipe.

 I have been both blessed and cursed with an excellent memory for emotional recall—literally being able to re-call those emotions that I have experienced, in something approaching the degree that I first experienced them, and at times can remember the events that triggered them enough to where I can even feel myself “psychically,” that is, with my inner senses, as being in the same physical shape and/or sometimes the room, if any, I was in then when I felt them. I have had enough such “quantum moments,” as I call them, surrounding my life’s traumatic experiences to make my life when I remember them turbulent to live through, but I have not experienced them consistently enoughto be diagnosed with anything for those experiences themselves. Nevertheless, the ability for such re-summoning is one that I vividly have, and for this reason, re-call is the spelling I will use throughout the book when talking about emotions or events that I remember clearly enough do this with. I will use the recall in one word when speaking about remembering things more generally. My ability to re-call emotional circumstances is an ability that, though uncomfortable, has served me well in my life. It has helped to counteract, together with some now-blossoming intuitive or what I call innersensory abilities, limitations that I would otherwise have had much more severely in hindered ability to feel sympathy regarding emotional events that I had not experienced. That inability was largely due to conditions discussed in this book, and fairly recently, I have been diagnosed with a mild case of a social deficit disorder called Asperger’s or high-functioning autism, some traits of which I have either received direct coaching from my dam to overcome or adapt, such as my tendency towards black/white and literalistic thinking (although this latter trait is back due to the friendships I’ve cultivated over the years and is here to stay because I mostly like and prefer it, as well as because it is more natural and even “friendly” to me.  My use of other forms of thinking over the years were largely for the sake of conforming myself outwardly to other peoples’ expectations as my outer senses and my inner (though not always conscious) personality chameleon could perceive through their words that they were, and not because they were truly a good fit for me. I also managed to compensate for my social deficits thanks to my ever-present curiosity about other two-legged beings and my developing intuitive and/or “psychic” skills, which I prefer to call innersensory, rather than extrasensory skills. I will not say too much about these as they are yet in the budding phase, only this:

 It is only these gifts, combined with the aforementioned curiosity about my fellow two-leggeds (why I don’t call them humans will be made clear in the book—suffice it to say my psychological species orientation and identity is non-human and I’ve known many others like me) and an ability to observe people that is keen enough that the observing I’ve done over the years could almost be called personal research rather than simply observation. I have also had a bit of coaching from my dam as aforementioned, that form the only reason that today I am today able to present something approaching “normal” so that most of my fellow two-leggeds—including some of those educated in psychology—are able to interact with me without realizing my disability. (I must say, though, it doesn’t take long for my inner weirdo to proudly stick out hes head! Said with a smile. )  For most of my life thus far, however, I was far more disabled—physically in my brain makeup, socially, and emotionally—than many people can ever begin to imagine. The tale that follows is about my mental and emotional—in that word order—life from birth onwards.

My tale is a story that my good reader will doubtless find both familiar and strange at once. Strange because in certain key respects my life was far removed from that of most people of any age group starting from the beginning, but especially most children and young people. Familiar because there are elements of it that are a bit more common, especially among my fellow Geeks—which to me means: Gallant, Entertaining, Enlightened and Knowledgeable, and is a term I proudly use for myself and that many of my friends also proudly wear, though the acronym is all mine in origin. Smiles. The familiar elements—such as being bullied—will have their place in my tale as well, but I will attempt in them to focus on what in my internal reality experience made my situation slightly different from that of others who have experienced them.

The characters involved in the tale of my struggle—in the aspects that are strange and those that are common—shall be shown, as far as is possible within my power, in such a way that protects the privacy of those mentioned, and in language as non-condemning as possible of these people—all while remaining truthful regarding the impact of what was done. The tale is told in large part as I have remembered it—it is not strictly chronological—I have, in portions of it, danced in and out again between what some people consider the veils of time and space—a thin veil that some metaphysically minded people believe is the only thing that truly separates us from other possible realities and time-periods, and which even some quantum scientists have suggested exists. I flow in and out, as said before, between the times I speak of, yet I do so as little as I can get away with and only when relevant.

What the reader shall find being told in the majority of this book is a bleaker tale than any schoolyard teasing, as bleak as that can be, or any weight struggle alone, as humiliating and overwhelming as that can also be. The story, dear reader, is that of the blankness of no heart, and, in an emotional sense, “no soul.”  A story of a terrible journey that I finished walking not so long ago, and am still working to recover from. I offer you my hand, then, dear my gentle reader. Take it if you will, and journey with me for a time on the lonely, and not just solitary, road, that was my life until but a whisper of a time ago. Journey with me, and bring your own heart with you. Let it guide you primarily during the telling of this my tale, not your mind, which can mute empathy in both the behavioral and the co-feeling senses into near non-existence. Are you ready? Then look: Here is my hand; Let us begin.

Love and peace,
Lilla K. Elteto (Brigit online), and Joshua Sunflame Christopher, trans-species-d (my word for those two-leggeds/humanoids whose psychological species orientation or identity is non-human) and bi-gendered lifestyle bard1 and well-wisher to the reader who is highly aligned psychologically and symbolically with hes inner elven male. (smiles, bowing)

Cautionary note: Those who are strongly sensitive or emotionally intuitive will wish to shield themselves as well as they possibly can, (explanation of shielding found in one chapter in the text for those who are not familiar with it, or with the term empathy as used by intuitives and psychics) as this book contains a lot of intense, and occasionally “dark,” material.

Privacy Note: I have done everything in my power in this work to be both honest to the degree that memory permits and respectful. I also have done everything I could to show others—even those whose behavioral choices were or ended up being hurtful to me—in a loving and non-condemning light. To protect the privacy of those individuals that I mention with any frequency or in any detail in this book, (not including pets and teddy bears) I have in most places either changed the names altogether or simply used the first letter of the individuals’ first names with a period, unless I was able to receive direct permission from said individuals to use their first names. Names altered or abbreviated include those of some of my relatives. In addition, I have used as few identifying physical details of other people as I could get away with, for all two-legged people mentioned in the text.  I mention portions of others’ features only in places where it enhances the portrayal of their personalities to do so, or where it relates to some part of my own abilities, such as that of deciphering body language. Only location names, including those of the schools I attended, have not been changed or omitted. Regarding other people, only their characters, as I remember and experienced them, and as I have come to understand them intuitively based on what I remember, have not been altered in any way. It is only with the permission of one of my elder brothers and my mother that I have even used any part of their real names other than our shared last name.

 I am always open to being incorrect in my assessment of others—highly open—but I am inclined to believe that in those cases where I err in my assessment, it is most likely to be on the side of not giving them enough credit for the positive qualities I know them to have had, and I welcome letters from those who knew me to correct any misperceptions that are shown. Where my memory is unclear, I have written so in the text, so as to be as guiltless of untruth as I possibly can. Any incorrectness in portraying someone’s character is due to the fallibility of memory, and not due to ill-will towards any on the part of this being. I ask in advance for my gentle reader’s forgiveness of any errors in the portrayal of my own or another’s character in any case where I have made mistakes in doing so that show them more negatively than they deserve. The errors are all my own and made from the kindest possible place of mind-heart I can possibly access in myself. Peace be with all who read this, whether I have met you yet or not, and my thanks to all of you for choosing this volume to read.

1 bard: Depending on the culture and period, someone who took all or some of the following roles: entertainer, poet, storyteller, historian, and singer of the king’s or another noble’s praises and therefore a diplomat. In some ancient cultures, they were the kings’ or nobles’ glory—or, if they chose to satire someone rather than praise, their ruin. (Yes, good milords and ladies, the late-night stand-up comedians had their forebears in the ancient bards, only they are much kinder about it than the ancients were!) Since modern American life is an electoral republic, not a monarchy, (Although Mad King George—excuse me, George Walker Bush, came close enough to monarch status without actually getting there!) and satire is an art that, while I have a great deal of respect for it (shame on me!) I only rarely turn my written or verbal wit to it, all but the last part of the definition is true, in a confessedly amateur sense, of me.

All quotations in the work are taken from http://www.thinkexist.com

All this material is copyright 2009 by Lilla K. Elteto/Jesse Sunflame Christopher. Share any part with this attached.