TX politics and Ghost

[flamingsword]

I still need to talk to Ghost about making our relationship a long distance one if he is not moving with me. Because I have not broached that subject, yet, and I don’t know how to. He feels safe in Texas because he thinks that the politicians of Texas are just greedy, and are using tribalism and othering to control people into voting for them. He doesn’t think that any of them are true believers in the “people I don’t see as human may as well go to work camps and die there” belief set and other forms of christofascism. I … disagree.,

He doesn’t disrespect me for having fears, but he also doesn’t believe me when I say to believe people when they show you who they are. Dan Patrick wants to prosecute people for being trans, and to erase us from public life. Is Abbott the same way? I don’t know, but I do know that he got the trumpster fire involved in our (multiple-securities-fraud-charged) Attorney General Ken Paxton’s trial. He does not reign in his friends, he closes ranks and toes what he sees as the party line. And with his party pushing Project 2025 and it’s criminalization of all trans care, our access to bathrooms, our access to sports, trans kids access to even hearing about us on the internet, and in all ways pushing us as far toward the margins as possible - well, the party line is a garrote around our necks.

I have the option of going to live with my mother in NC for the about ten to twelve months that it will take to get more education and take the necessary tests for living and working in Washington. And yeah, Mom is bad about respecting my pronouns, but at least she’s not a reprehensible person in other, abuse-adjacent, ways. I can manage a year in non-ideal circumstances if I have to, if that’s what it will take to get me to being proximal to my best friends on a longer-term basis.

In other news, if anyone has had the “why don’t we make our relationship into a long distance relationship, a vacationship, or something less defined” conversation, please please please hit me up, I need so much advice right now.

Comments

Re: The Point

[flamingsword]

He hasn’t had a full manic episode since we got married, and hasn’t had hypomania in the last ten years. Lots of people with Bipolar Disorder have brain changes in the late thirties and early forties that make their symptom severity worse, but Ghost seems to have gotten better as far as mania goes, possibly because he’s stayed on medication since his early twenties.


If he’s talking to his parents every weekend, and me (or a different person if he doesn’t feel okay talking to me) in the middle of the week, then I think he would be as stable as he is right now. I could call his parents, one of his besties, or his brother to come talk him into going inpatient if need be. I’m a big piece of his support network, but I’m not the only thing standing between him and doom; the way it has sometimes felt. And since his family doesn’t know about the drug use, I have at least one way to blackmail him into getting help if he super needs it.

I get that my relationship to Ghost and his relationship to me are tied up in this, but what other relationships are you thinking this will change things for, if you think there a four of them?

Re: The Point

[nyyki]

I sort of figured you'd catch that detail. In any given interaction between two people, , say A and B, then the number of relationships is AB^2, or four in this case -- A to B, B to A, A to A, and B to B. Many people don't know about the significance of the self relationship, but things can hit that one as hard or harder as the interpersonal ones (I guess the proper term for that self relationship is an intrapersonal relationship, at least in that conceptual model).

I'm glad things have gotten more stable for him. That's one concern off the table.