Michael Part 1: Being Seen

Hook

Michael:

I feel an impulse to demonstrate “hey, I understand the harm. I understand the gravity. There's something I have to prove for myself to be seen again, right? I guess I'll just ask for some trust.

Intro Music & Intro

Eden:

Hello, I am Eden, and this is Keep the Mess: Messy Conversations with Messy People, where we have conversations about how we relate to our bodies and go down whatever rabbit holes we find. I started this podcast because I am a bit obsessed with this topic. I struggle with embodiment myself and wanted to learn about how other people live in and out of their bodies. I figured if I’m interested in these things, chances are that others are interested as well, so welcome fellow obsessives. In this episode I speak with my friend Michael.

This was recorded May of last year and it was the third interview I did.

This is the first half of my beautiful and intense conversation with Michael. I am incredibly thankful to Michael for their willingness to share vulnerable aspects of their story with me. I want to recognize that one of those is about how Michael has been convicted of child molestation. I understand that this is one of the most sensitive topics out there, and it may be difficult to listen to. However, I will say that, of all the people I’ve talked with for this project, Michael was the most aware of how talking publicly could cost them, and also the most mindful in their speech. In this first part, Michael talks about trauma, addiction, and their experience with the criminal legal system.

This is likely the earliest recording I will be releasing, which is why the interview is as long as it is, although I believe that Michael and I needed to take more time given the sensitivity of this topic. Another consequence of it being an early recording is that the audio is not ideal. A transcript is attached in case you need it.

Content Warning for talk about transphobia, self-harm, suicidality, sexual abuse, and rape.

And lastly, I want to remind people that just because I have someone on this podcast doesn’t mean I agree with them on all matters, or even many. These episodes are not about facts or saying things perfectly, but about peoples’ stories, their experiences, their processing. Connecting and communicating with ourselves and each other is a messy affair, so I ask for a listening ear and some grace.

Alright, here is the first half of my interview with Michael.

Main Conversation

Eden:

Do you want to talk about how we know each other?

Michael:

So we know each other through recovery. The group we were in was very affirming and supportive of GLBTQ folks. I think the first time I had met you…oh yeah, so that group had a tradition of asking for our pronouns. And at the time, like I particularly remember your pronoun choices.

Eden:

It was he and she then.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah, he or she, yeah.

Eden:

Right, he or she.

Michael:

And I myself had really been struggling with that question and wasn’t sure where I wanted to go with that. I think at that point I was saying he or they, but I really appreciated having that question continually brought to me. And by gaining some confidence and asserting they/them…

Eden:

Yeah, I didn't realize that you weren't confident about that.

Michael:

I was not.

Eden:

I've just sort of always assumed that you had it figured out, which I think that's probably more about me and thinking other people have it figured out.

Michael:

Well, the struggle I think in that was a lot of my questioning whether I or not had earned it, you know whether I presented outside of, you know, cisgender roles enough. Just what did that really mean? Like what did I have to have in order to say they/them.

Eden:

Right.

Michael:

I felt that there was requirements and it took me some time to get my head around that.

Eden:

Yeah I do, I feel that in the trans community a lot of: Have I earned this, am I trans enough, am I nonbinary enough? There's a whole trans imposter syndrome.

Michael

We’ve lived as imposters for so long.

Eden:

That's true. Yeah, but then we feel like imposters when we actually get to who we are. I'll also add that, I guess since COVID started right? that we've been in a little spiritual group.

Michael:

Yeah.

Eden:

What we even call that group now?

Michael:

I don't know, I've called it the spiritual reading group, but we read a lot of poetry. Yeah, I mean we talk about things that move us and we have a shared understanding of some sense of spirituality and some sense of queer identity, and I feel like we've got a long ways with that/ I've been very appreciative of having that. And in fact that time and being in that community like has really helped me settle into my identity as a queer person and feel more comfortable with what that means.

Eden:

Yeah, it just happened to become this queer and trans space. I don’t know if that was on purpose, but that's what ended up happening.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah.

Eden:

Would that have happened if Covid…

Michael:

I doubt it.

Eden:

Yeah.

Michael:

For me the reason why I asked to have that group was I was finding that the online spaces that we had for recovery were not working. They weren't safe for me and, you know, I still had some needs that weren't being met, so that it takes some effort to all right, how can I have my needs met, right? Like how can I create this space that I don't have? And you know, saying how quick I create this? Yes, and that's how I phrase it to myself but also recognizing you can't do these things by yourself right and I’m so appreciative of you and the other individual in that meeting. I don’t know, I don’t know what to say, just sitting in community, it's really been very grounding for me, in an ungrounded time.

Eden:

Yeah, I think it's probably been the spiritual place that I had in the last two years where I felt the most safe and also I think what we have learned in that group is that spirituality doesn't have to be directly about spirituality and that being with people is spiritual. Listening to reading is spiritual. Sharing writing, which has happened a couple of times is spiritual and I think that art is just inherently spiritual.

Michael:

I agree, yeah. I've talked to you about this before, but I had an argument with somebody in a writing group about, you know, what is an act of writing? What kind of act is it? They were very adamant, just like “oh writing is a political act. It's always inherently a political act” and I was like “no, it's a spiritual act,” and you know, they're both kind of true, and I guess you know it depends a lot on approach and perspective. I really like thinking about it as a spiritual act though. Like that's what I want to do with my writing, yeah.

Eden:

I really appreciated that group and getting to know the two of you in. Cause yeah, I didn't really know either of you all that well. I knew that both of you were interesting folk and that was about it. So yeah, I'm glad for that. And yeah, I was wondering if you could introduce yourself in any way that you feel is fitting and is important to you. What do you want people to know about you?

Michael:

Oh interesting. What do I want people to know about me? Yeah, that's good question.

Eden:

Yeah, it’s a huge question.

Michael:

No, no. Yeah, I mean, I have all sorts of ways I want to project about that, but you phrased it in a very curious way: what do I want people to know about me? I think really what I want people to know about me is I care very deeply about the world. I look for ways to contribute. I'm often afraid that I do not have ways to contribute. Yeah, I mean do I need anything more, maybe not… I'm afraid a lot here, there are a lot of things that define my story that aren't really the story I want to tell? And I feel like I need to overcome those things continually in order to be seen, be human, right? Like many of us in recovery had very adverse childhood experiences. I had as well, I think. One of the ways I can characterize at best is to say I was often not seen. And I mean, I think it's some point we're going to start talking about bodies, but like sort of connected to this idea of, like I really felt very invisible most of my life, especially in childhood. And I mean so much, just like…we talked about being disconnected from our body, but yeah I I feel like I felt this very real sense, you know, even surprised when I’m seen or noticed or shrinking when I'm seen or noticed. Yeah, just getting my head around, you know, of having space and having an impact on others is, it's been interesting, right? I mean, I would say something of a challenge recognizing that, right, for me and my recovery. And I mean, I'm also just going to talk about having, to dive into a little bit of you know, the fear of not being seen in you know, my story, yeah? Uh, about 14 years ago now I hurt somebody, right? I harmed a child in my care, which I have been convicted for. Just to be clear, my conviction was child molestation in the first degree. This was somebody in my care as I said. And yeah, you know, it's interesting, there are so many things I can say about this. And in a lot of respects I feel like there's just not enough time to say everything. There's so much, you know, so it's something that needs to have a lot said about it too, right? I feel an impulse partly to demonstrate “hey, I understand. I understand the harm. I understand the gravity.” There's something I have to prove for myself to be seen again, right? I guess I'll just ask for some trust, right? I have to go there because it will sort of consume every moment you and I have here, and I think we have other things to talk about. But yeah, this is big, you know. Some of where that came from for me is what I was talking about, right, about not understanding, right, that I have an impact on the world, like literally, like seeing myself very invisible and you know. So like sort of discovering in a very real and hard way that I'm an actor in the world. I do things, it affects people as opposed to living in this unreality of, you know, this sort of disembodied intelligence, which was my experience for a little more than half my life, but, maybe a little bit more than a little bit more.

Eden:

Well, it sounds like you felt other quite a lot in your life.

Michael:

Felt other…I mean, I certainly didn't feel that I belonged, right? I really didn't have a sense of community or acceptance. I mean a lot of this comes from my father was in the Air Force, moved around a lot. I was always sort of the outsider kid, you know, trying to get into the clicks, new groups, you know, make new friends. I didn't do that very well. I was very shy. Like painfully shy. But also, I don't know, there's some intersection here with identity as well, right? Like sort of having something to…there’s this term in writing a professor of mine used to use a lot when he talked about writing. Talked about needing something to hang your hat on, right? Like a real tangible thing that sort of pulls you into an experience. I would say like for myself, I didn't really have something to hang my hat on, right? I was very adrift in my life. In a lot of ways I didn't know myself, you know. And I mean, that's kind of dangerous, too, right? Like when I don't know myself, I let other people tell me who I am, right, which has been a lot a lot of problems for me and I know I thought about this a lot in the context of gender too. It's like part, it's by no means all, it's part of the reason why I choose them/they then pronouns. It's like I don't, and I would say I don't identify right, like I never really inhabited for myself a sense of maleness or a sense of femaleness. They're very foreign to me, like I don't I don't understand them. And in fact, when I hear them, I see them and I see displays and see gender roles, they're so bizarre to me. I struggle with it. And I struggle with it in a number of ways, and I struggle with what's asked of me. If I'm being asked to be someway because of being read someway and it's like this is weird. But also, like when I see other people do it and it's…I don't get it. I I think that's just the best I can describe that and I don't know…to me like it's almost equivalent as choosing to be a sports fan and rooting for a particular team or other. I guess about how. I understand and see sort of like a, at least for me, you know, if I were to really want to be, male.

Eden:

Yeah, I find myself really relating to you when you said how you grew up with your dad in the, what did you say?

Michael:

Airforce.

Eden:

OK, that’s what I thought. And sounds like you moved a bit.

Michael:

About every four years or so. I mean some kids had it worse, right? But yeah, it's still rough, you know.

Eden:

It’s still rough. Yeah, and I moved around a lot as a kid and wasalways, yeah, that new person and my way of dealing with it is that I adapted pretty quickly and I was sort of beloved but I think what you and I shares is that sense of knowing that we don't belong, or feeling that we don't belong. And it makes sense to me when you talk about being given these options of well you are this or you are this. And you’re like: “why?”

Michael:

Yeah, well, you know, trying to think like when did that really enter into my consciousness? That was actually probably in my 20s. Maybe I'll just give a little bit of history for me in that I don't feel like the question was even presented to me as a child, like I didn't think about it. I didn't think…uh, that's not true, that's not true, I remember there was…I lived in Michigan and there was a girl neighbor, who I played a lot with and you know we played Barbies, right? And I loved it, right? But I also remember thinking this was not like just the boy thing that I was supposed to be doing. And I think she even brought this up, like “you’re boy, why are you playing Barbies with me?” But I was going to say, I mean for one I didn't care about that, but other than that, like it didn't, come up much for me. I didn't have, probably didn't have a lot of gender modeling, I mean my father wasn't really, much of a presence in my life. I mean, he was an alcoholic and you know, naturally, because of that, ended up not being really involved with me much. He was also violent and, uh, at some point later…So very early on, like not much of a sense of like gender stuff except for some weird rules and like what's this about? As I got a little older I got this sense of, you know, “OK, so I'm supposed to be a male, but sort of, what I see in front of me, this male is something that was very horrifying for me, right? That was something I very much didn't want, you know, and I had, I don't know…Also, it was something I very much wanted to push away from it, like I didn't want to be this, I didn’t want to be a monster. Which is sort of like the definition that I kind of have for what it meant to be male. So I had that for a long time. And then when I started getting into puberty, you know, a lot…what do I want to say? Like a lot of kids started asserting themselves and showing how well they're gendered and I think for boys that often becomes picking on other people who don't really demonstrate those traits very strongly and I got ridiculed a lot in school. And also I had an older brother who very much picked on me about not being masculine and well like being ugly and no girl would ever like me sort of things right and so started having that a lot and just like really feeling this sense of “OK, so I'm not male in the way that society wants me to be. And two, I don't really want to be it, right?”

I used to call this, you know, as I thought about it to myself, I used to call it my double bind. You know, I'm being asked to be something I don't want to be. It's like “how dare you not be this thing that also is bad,” right? It was really weird and I kind of didn't know what I thought about this and also like you know, I was also dealing with a lot of things, like really wanting to exert like what would be traditionally thought of as very feminine traits, you know. Wanting to dress femininely, wanting, you know…I still have this every time, like every you know when I see Icons you know, pop stars or, you know, depict, other depictions, people I meet in real life who step outside of sort of gender norms I feel, how do I say it, like…It's the same feeling, you know, I get if I would watch a very cute puppy video, right? Just like, oh, like there's a breath of relief, you know, there's that, I don't know…I'm sure there's some hormonal responses there too, right. You know it's such a feeling of comfort for me and sometimes some deep, some sadness or loss, you know I don't always feel like these things are available for me, because of how I talked about a little bit with my background, and like, my conviction, right, and thinking about how will these things be interpreted. And, you know, I'm under increased scrutiny, I'm still…So you know I report to the Department of Corrections for this for the rest of my life. And yeah, you know, like the state is not very excited about queerness.

Eden:

Wait, the state?

Michael:

Yeah the state.

Eden:

Do you mean the state as in _____ state? Or do you mean state

As in—

Michael:

Sure, I mean the state as in, you know, institutions. But yeah, _____ state as well, sure, you know. Probably better than some places, right? But you know, I know for a fact that there are trans individuals in ____ (city) right, in prison who the state refers refuses to use their pronouns. Yeah, I, yes, I have a lot of fear, right? I don't want to be open with the state because I think it'd be misconstrued as being deviant. And in fact, you know, as I've had therapy, this is a topic I attempted to approach with therapy. My therapist, they're very much not interested in talking about...

Eden:

Queerness?

Michael:

Yeah…And particularly I wanted to talk about gender identity issues and this was not something I was able to, and I want to say to everybody thi is just like, court mandated therapy.

Eden:

Okay, there we go. I was wondering “why are you seeing this—"

Michael:

Yeah, this was court mandated therapy which I finished many years ago. Actually, like there is a therapist that I had seen that was originally associated with that court mandated therapy that I've seen since that uses my pronouns, and I'm very happy about. Yeah, I feel like I've drifted off a bit…

Eden:

Yeah, let's bring it back to what I think you were trying to talk about which was…I believe talking about your conviction and things. Is that is where you wanted to start?

Michael:

No, I think it…trying to remember…maybe I can let this one go. But uh, yeah, it's around gender identity. And, oh yeah, I was talking a little bit about my history of sort of gender awareness and kind of like what, what, that that was like for me. And then you know, hitting puberty like that became very different and and I started feeling very deficient, sort of, sort of in my displays and like not really wanting to do that…Oh yeah, and this, comes down to my choice of pronouns and it's been a lot of things to me. I talked a little bit about how sort of reflective of my not having, like literally not having identified for this rule, like not being able to understand them. But also this affirmation for me, of me of me being able to show up and present in any way that feels whole and helpful for me. And not have these sort of expectations thrust on me. So it really is like for me very much a self affirmation. I mean, it's partly an affirmation of being enough, right? It's also a recognition of “hey like I don't get this stuff and it's okay, right?” It's also a recognition that, you know, I would really to dress femininely and to…what else do I really want? I like the idea of being glamorous, right? Like there's a certain celebration in that. And that's not something that's really given to masculine, you know, that…It's a very joyous expression, right, this idea of glamour and yeah, there's a lot of fun in that, right? There's a lot of fun in that, a lot of freedom, a lot of whimsy, right? I feel like I'm expected to be too serious.

Eden:

You know, while we've been talking, I have been noticing your wedding ring?

Michael:

Oh yeah.

Eden:

Which is beautiful. What stone is that?

Michael:

I want to say this is malachite.

Eden:

Malachite. Yeah, it's beautiful and I was thinking about how men don't tend to be allowed, quote unquote, to have things that are beautiful or anything that sort of smacks of femininity. It is women who have stones on their wedding rings and men have…I remember when my partner and I were shopping for his wedding ring. Everything was thick and (vocalizes tough sounds), you know, and so…

Michael:

Yeah, yeah. I've chosen to express femininity mostly in like accessories. I don't have it on me, but like I have a woman's wallet. This is a woman's ring I'm wearing. I have women's glasses that I wear. They're mostly small displays. The things that I feel I can get away with, right? They're a little less noticeable. I have a ton of fear around this, and I mean a literal fear for my safety. I mean both by the state as I mentioned, but also like, I had fear of violence done on me.

Eden:

I don't know if you remember this, but I remember after we had just left for recovery gathering, you know. And you had gotten a haircut recently. And a number of people had noted it. And I remember you having this frustration of how excited people were that you had cut your hair and I wondered, did that have to do with gender?

Michael:

Oh yeah, well this is something I've experienced all my life and I've kind of gone through periods of various hair length. Right now, you see me and I'll call out the recorders in the room: you can't see this, but I have long hair, right, shoulder length I guess you'd call it. And yeah, I've gone through various hair lengths, hair colors, other kinds of styles throughout my life and every time I've gotten a massive haircut, whacked it short, you know, it was like everybody seems to be relieved, it's like “oh so great, nice to see you,” you know. It's like…this has been since I was a teenager, right? I don't know that I've done it that many times, but I've done it a few and it was also weird because this is in recovery, this is in the group that was, you know, supportive of us and I don't know how it was meant, but that's certainly how it was received. And maybe, you know, quite possibly not even intentional, but still, like there's expectations of how I present. And you know if I am showing up with the more masculine presentation it’s celebrated right? So that was frustrating. But I just want to say one more thing though. My hair length is often indicative of my sense of safety and if I'm feeling more comfortable with myself more, safe, I will permit myself that right? And I'll tell you that that particular time I was very much not feeling safe. I was a little concerned I'm like, oh, I was having a trouble with the state at the moment and not of my own, like I had a really crazy experience with the corrections officer that was challenging and, you know I was, like: “oh, you know what if I go to jail, I can't show up like this, right? I will be raped.” And I don't know how much of it, like…I really don't think it's an overstatement. In the time I had spent in jail, I was ritually harassed and threatened with rape, continually, it was, yeah, it was pretty terrifying. And I would say overall, like, really the worst aspect of all of that, right? I think about that often. It's like, I can do time. Having liberties restricted is not, I mean, it's not great, right? But I can get through that, I can find ways to make it spiritually meaningful. It’s the perpetual threat of rape that is not so easily dealt with.

Eden:

As someone who was born female bodied and experiences the world that way, I remember my partner and I left the house at the same time, and we were both putting in our earbuds to listen to whatever it was on our way to work and I remember him asking me “why are you just putting one earbud in?” And I remember thinking “only a male bodied person would ask me that.” And right now I'm realizing not just male bodied people. But people who don't have a consant fear of being rape for whatever reason. It really changes a lot. You said in your time in jail you experienced this. How much time did you spend?

Michael:

Yeah, I didn’t spend much time, luckily, yeah. So I had 22 days in jail, which for my crime is little. I have a suspended sentence, a five year suspended sentence was actually my life I have it hanging over my head. Which is another story in itself, but yeah, so I, had 22 days in jail.

I feel guilty saying that, right? Like I have some sense of like how that might be received or heard. I I feel like and I will take a moment to explain a little bit why that's the time that I faced and so my conviction. It was a plea bargain and I did plead guilty. The particular sentencing is known as the SOSA, a special sex offender sentencing alternative. I was particularly eligible for this on a number of counts, one was having established contact, established a relationship with my victim. Having support from, on this case, the mother, the victim was of the age that could support or not support…I mean other other considerations including the fact that I had self-reported this crime, yeah. But I'm also saying this and that, all of this like it's so interesting. And a little bit of difficulty in talking about these things, and in a situation like this where, like, like I recognize and affirm that this is a very serious topic. It's also not what we're talking about today. We may or may not be, but I'm just saying like it's very hard to deal with appropriately, because there are…it deserves attention and it gets attention. But also it kind of can't get attention, it can't get the full attention it needs. In every moment that it comes up because then it consumes everything.

Eden:

Well, a couple of things I want to say. One, we're here to talk about what you want...

Michael:

I know.

Eden:

...to talk about, and two, there, we don't have to have just one interview.

Michael:

Yeah.

Eden:

So I just want to give space and allow you to go to what you want?

Michael:

Sure, sure.

Eden:

And, you know, right now I notice you're using a lot of very technical and sort of distancing language.

Michael:

Uh, yeah.

Eden:

I was wondering, is this out of, Is this out of protection for you? Is this out of protection for your victim and your victim's mother?

Michael:

Yeah, I appreciate the call out. I think it's accurate. Um…I’m considering. I think there's a couple things going on. I mean one, I think it's reflective of anxiety.

Eden:

Of course.

Michael:

But also, it's a bit reflective of my therapy around this. We did a lot of work and exercises and sort of talk, I want to say, like, various ways of our taking accountability for what we've done and for accountability and also various ways that we might talk to people that we've harmed.'

Eden:

Talk to the people?

Michael:

Yeah, talk to the people. Yeah, I mean like specific exercises around, like writing letters, which may or may not actually be received, but ways to take accountability to demonstrate some empathy, to clarify, like you know what was it that we did, right. Because particularly in the case of children, that might not really be very clear or understood, right?And this had mixed use, right? It was used therapeutically for victims of sexual abuse, but also for, as a process for us and sort of coming to better understanding. But I'm not sure how good of therapeutic experiences these were always and that…I think they were often very, we very much went to distancing language.

Eden:

We meaning you and your therapist?

Michael:

Oh, I didn't describe… these were group sessions.

Eden:

Okay, there we go. I kept wondering why are you using “we.” I know sometimes I know for me when I will use the language of you and things like that when I don't want to describe myself so I was like…

Michael:

Yeah, so like, these are group sessions. We workshop this all together like bring in some prepared work. I mean very much like a writers workshop, you know, criticism and red underlines: “don't say this, you're not taking responsibility and…” right? Yeah, but also because of the impacts that these things could have on somebody hearing them, right, we often would get pretty distant, you know, like so…and I think I have so many years of being habituated to talking about this like that, I think I fall into that immediately.

Eden:

Talking about it in a way that is not specifically triggering and...

Michael:

Yeah.

Eden:

Okay, yeah. Because right now I'm remembering when I heard you tell your story at a gathering, and you had done it, you had volunteered last minute to do it, which I remember thinking was very brave. I think it's brave when anyone does that. But I remember that you talked about it in a way that was fully understanding the weight of what you had done, no defense about that and yet also with caring about yourself and your own history. And I remember what an impact that had on me, how refreshing it was. And I think I remember…maybe a month or so ago What I had said to you about how much your story, basically the ways that it helped view myself with care and with gentleness and forgiveness and I remember you said that you both understood what I was saying but it was also painful.

Michael:

Oh yeah, yeah.

Eden:

I don't remember the exact words I said.

Michael:

I'm trying to remember what it was. Oh yeah, you were talking about, a bit of, about how, if even I could have come back...

Eden:

Oh man, I’m cringing it just hearing it now.

Michael:

...if even I could have come back or, you know, like have…what do I want to say, like…You valued me and even I had value, like that sort of sense.

Eden:

Yeah, yeah, it's just, I can hear it now. This is the reason I didn't remember it.

Michael:

Yeah. And yeah, I get it and I also get that it came from a place of love.

Eden:

It really did.

Michael:

Really, no, honestly, honestly, honestly like this is what it means to trust somebody, right?

Eden:

Yeah.

Michael:

And I trust you. And I also, I feel, I inhabit that spot, right, like I know what it means to be considered a monster? And yet I have to live my life, right? And also I have found ways to live meaningfully. I found ways to pack more into the stream of life, right? It is hard, right, like, I have those barriers. Those are real barriers. What you called out is something I really face, you know. This question, I mean, these are real doubts that I have for myself. These are real things that I feel like I'm judged on all the time. And so yeah, like it brought up a lot of that pain, right? A lot of this…it's like, oh yeah, but I'm often seen this way in the world. And it was also affirming, you know, like it really was both at the same time, you know. It touched on something real...

Eden:

Yeah.

Michael:

...right? And I know that you love and affirm me and care for me, right? Like I know that and I have that capacity, I have the tenacity to hear, you know, some of that difficult truth like spoken aloud, yeah.

Eden:

I was speaking specifically about suicidality, which is something you've also experienced.

Michael:

Yeah, I've experienced a lot of that, I mean…like coming back to body a bit too, I feel like my suicidality has a lot to do with that and I see that on a couple of fronts. You have previewed a little bit about, like going into a bit of the philosophy of body and what it means for me. I'm going to jump on it, you haven't asked it yet, but I'm going to do it.

Eden:

Oh, I never planned on asking these questions out loud.

Michael:

Okay, yeah. I know this is something I was thinking, you know, before we started talking. It's like, what does body mean to me, right? And in some ways, like I really thought, like, body means death. Why? Why does body mean death, right? It means death because, well in some very real ways, if I didn't have a body, I wouldn’t die. Right, like a body is exemplary of my mortality, right? Of my limits, right? If I have a body I can only do so many certain things, right? Like I'm stuck here, I'm not somewhere else, right? So you know, I'm not omnipresent, I’m not God right? You know, I'm not all powerful. I have, you know, limited physical strength, you know. It entirely demonstrates my limited capacity, right? And so in a lot of ways as I said body for me is death, or at least is mortality, right and okay so we're getting to suicidality, sort of what that was what this is about. A lot of my struggle in my life has been learning to accept limits. Accept my mortality. Accept my limits of capacity. And a lot of that has been accepting the limits of my body. What it is to me. And not being able to give everything to me that I necessarily want it to. And I hadn't accepted that a lot in my life and that would come out in, I would say suicidality, but it's really a lot more than that. So as a teen I was a cutter, right. And that for me, like I hear people talk about that, and you know, say that “oh, it's all about, you know, the release or it's like” no, that was not the case for me. It was not like some way for me to gain control or… I think it was a lot about, well, for me it was two things, like punishment and it was intentional disfigurement, right? And both of them had a lot to do with body, so, my hatred of my body, that's something I experienced for a long time. A long, long time. I still don't feel great about body, but the question of it just doesn't loom in my mind like it used to so like I have some relief from that question. But yeah, the disfigurement was, very much like “But how dare you be this way?” I mean, to my body, right? And not being content. But also very wrapped up in this whole sense of how others, you know, view my body and how others experience my body and, ultimately not being able to accept a lot of these messages I was getting, as I was talking about before, from my peers, my brother, from media, right, of expectations. Not feeling like I was anywhere near what the world wanted me to be and…okay, I'm coming back, maybe it was a control thing.

Eden:

The truth is, it's always a control thing.

Michael:

Alright, just learned something about myself today.

Eden:

I know. I always find that, as I'm saying something, that my sentence morphs, like my purpose morphs over this period, like the period of the sentence and I went “I came to a different conclusion than I expected at the beginning of that.”

Michael:

Yeah, I mean there's also a lot of morality and stuff that was kind of mixed up into that. Like I was, so when I was 11 I was raped by a female friend of the family on 2 occasions and shortly after that it's what I would call now, what I would understand now as abuse reactive acting out, right? And so I, you know, engaged in, say, some strange sexual behaviors at age 11 and, you know, like that very quickly, like I associated that with my sexuality and had a lot of feelings about that and what that meant for me so, I had a lot of sort of punishment behavior and a lot of, I don’t know, just like threats against myself, right, to keep myself in check, so to speak, so there's a lot of that too. And they're all kind of all like mixed up and intertwined for me. But ultimately, it really does, one way or another, come down to body shame, you know, shame of what I might do with my body or shame of my body itself and like how's it seem, you know? Or experienced? Yeah, so like that was that was real hard for me. And going back to therapy, was weird, I do have a little bit of an axe to grind, therapy really didn't want to deal with this one, either. And it's funny because...

Eden:

The court appointed therapy?

Michael

Yeah, the court appointed therapy. You know, I was reading my evaluation. So I had an evaluation as part of my process having the SOSA, right. Yeah, some requirements and the evaluation you know, that’d show that I'd be amenable to treatments and safe. But you know, they diagnosed me in a number of ways, and one of the things they diagnosed me with was, you know, possible body dysmorphia. Okay, great. Well, they didn't actually treat it till much much later. And I actually, I do want to say like I did end up working with the therapist who was really great around that who I met through that, but I worked with not in that capacity, but on my own, on all those things really helped a ton. Yeah I, I'm just saying all this to say that, like body issues and what I thought about the body. What the heck do I think about my body and bodies has been really quite something. And in my mental health, or at times, you know, lack of it, right? Out of my stability and comfort and... I want to say health and I feel like that's kind of a cheap way out, but a lot of my health now comes from having a new relationship with my body. What is that new relationship? I don't know. I mean, certainly more respect. Definitely more capacity to accept.

Eden:

Yeah, I know in our meeting, that spiritual reading whatever it is group, that idea of acceptance has come up a lot. I know you grew up with a Christian background. Where would you say you are now?

Michael:

Spiritually non religious, I…That's a great question. I mean mostly, I think in terms of spiritual principles rather than metaphysical realities, because I never really could get my head around those. I just kinda chose to focus and deal with what I can, right? I did, however, come into some Buddhist practices which I've really greatly appreciate and which have helped me a lot. I don't think it'd be fair to call myself a Buddhist, but, I don't know, I sort of pick and choose my way along.

Eden:

I had a sense that your thoughts on acceptance, not just thoughts but your, I don't know if I feel comfortable using the word aura, but like your, the vibes that I get from you in terms of acceptance, I had a feeling that comes from your more Buddhist ideas. Is that accurate?

Michael:

Or at least how I've interpreted them, right?

Eden:

Right.

Michael:

Which maybe I'll go ahead and expound on a little bit. What does acceptance mean to me? You know a very real sense. I'm a pragmatist, right? And that's how I've taken a lot of spirituality for me and recovery overall, it's a very pragmatic approach. And the sense of well, what works right? And the other sense? Okay, let's talk about acceptance, right? If I can't change something, it has no benefit to me to sit and bemoan it, right, to say that this thing should not be, right? This is terrible. The only thing that I'm doing is making my life less livable. Which you know, I understand that as a lot of a sense of Buddhist detachment. And even then, like ultimately like, there's just many times in my life, I just have a very pragmatic decision of deciding: Here’s this thing in front of me that I don’t like (?) How meaningful or important is it to me? Is it worth some effort in trying to change it? Can I change it, right? It's just making a very clear decision on this, you know, about how I want to spend my energies and is it really actually even meaningful or effective if I do so. This is really necessary for me to do because, you know, in my life I have, let's say I've squandered a lot of energy, right? I’ve sat in bitterness about things that that I really can't do anything about. And it has not improved my life, doing so, and ultimately, right, I'm trying to eke out a life here, right like I’m trying to live in a way that I can live, that I can maintain.

Eden:

Yeah, accepting limitations is something you said a couple of times. Because of your conviction and your sentence, you have quite a few. And so I know on the one hand you have these limitations...

Michael:

Yeah, yeah.

Eden:

...and you accept the fact that you have these, and then at the same time I know that you are, you know, have done advocacy work, and things like that to change that. Describe that to me.

Michael:

Oh yeah. Everything you say is true. And it's also hard, it’s a hard problem and I don't know that I understand this entirely right, this is something that I'm continually sort of reformulating and figuring out. What does this mean for me? I mean, just today I was talking about that, like what am I doing? What does it mean? Yeah, so I was the executive director of such an organization for a while, right? I stepped down because I didn't feel like I was… I stepped down for a number of reasons, but, I think at the core, I wasn't really prepared to do the kind of advocacy I think that was expected of me again, right? Because I want to say I'm not somebody who knows their mind oftentimes and I'm comfortable with that. I see that as a virtue, right, to at least not always know my mind, right, or maybe to often not know my mind and to be willing to change it and to say, you know, I don't know, maybe live in doubt. Hmm, I’m not sure doubt is quite the right turn, but, uh, let me come back. OK, so the advocacy. What does that mean? What does that look like for me? What's acceptance?

Eden:

Actually could you, would you mind telling me what your limitations are?

Michael:

Oh, what are my limitations. Yeah OK, yeah actually.

Eden:

Your and other people’s.

Michael:

Well, you know it really differs from person to person and actually as far as my judgment and sentence goes, right, what the court tells me, is it's actually very easily articulated: that I obey all laws and that's number 1.

Eden:

No jaywalking.

Michael:

OK, that's a little different actually. There’s a bit, t hat’s a civil law as opposed to legal issue, right? So it is actually seen very differently between jaywalking and…

Eden:

I'm glad. That would be pretty difficult.

Michael:

Yeah. Alright so: obey all laws. Second one is obey my conditions of the Department of Corrections, right? Third one is no contact—it's very interesting around gender too—no contact with minor females until or unless approved by Department of Corrections and therapy. No contact with minor males is approved, or is allowed, as approved by therapy?

Eden:

Doesn’t the first one also allow…

Michael:

It cuts out DOC.

Eden:

OK, so they both involved the therapy thing.

Michael:

Yeah.

Eden:

But only one of them has the DOC part.

Michael:

Yeah. And also the wording is a little different, and it probably has some legal meaning. One is like no contact allowed. The other one says contact is allowed as approved by and it’s a little...

Eden:

Okay.

Michael:

It's a fine distinction that I don't totally track, but it does certainly cut out DOC, right? And then no contact with my victim until or unless approved by DOC, treatment, and the victim’s mother. Really, there is no problem with that, right? Like that's very easy to live with. But that's not the reality if the situation, or what really happens, right? So then there's Department of Corrections, and they have their own rules.

Eden:

So to clarify: you think that the first part is, let’s say, just?

Michael:

Yeah, I would consider that just. I mean this is very light, so most people have way more restrictions than that, right? I was in very much a different situation. I had a housemate, so I bought a house with somebody I met in treatment and he had something like thirty different conditions, right. A whole bunch of things including, like he's got to disclose to anybody he works for about his offense, right. I don't really understand the meaning of that right? Like there's nothing that was just, you know, connected with work for him in this way. But yeah, it's been a barrier, right, for employment, and also a barrier for being self-employed, right? And the Department of Corrections will then say OK. Well any clients you have or you know any business partners or you know you do a business deal with somebody you got to disclose to them, all sorts of things ways this goes.

Eden:

Which you did not have.

Michael:

No. But there's that catch-all, right? The number two in my list is like, you know, obey all the rules and conditions. That ends up encompassing a lot of stuff, right. So there's some minor things they're about like, OK, so I have to report to DOC like once a month. I have to, you have to take regularly scheduled polygraphs, though honestly I haven't had one now in like 2 1/2 years because I've been on supervision now for like 13 years. It used to be every quarter, so like four times a year I had regularly scheduled polygraphs. And those things can be excruciating, right? It's an interrogation ultimately, right? And also you get asked all sorts of uncomfortable gross stuff sometimes and you're in such a disadvantaged position going into that, right, so deprived of any sort of power, that you become very, I want to say, you're easily abused, right. And so polygraphers, you know, can be very nasty with you. And you know, you just have to kind of deal with it. And you know also odd things like, I had to sign at one point about being, I had to sign that I was not being compelled to take a polygraph, right?

Eden:

But you were.

Michael:

But I was, yeah. And when I point this out, I pointed this out and also, I’m a pretty nervous person overall, right? Pretty anxious person overall and I'm like OK, I'm perjuring myself right before I take a polygraph, right? Like I'm, how am I going to do on the polygraph here? You know I was, it was kind of messing with my head, right? And you know, I was trying to tell him I was like well, but no. And he had some rationale for it, like: no, I wasn’t because “you agreed when you took your plea deal,” but…Finally, anyways, but you know I mentioned this thing well, it's like, well, you know you gotta sign it or I'm going to go talk to your CCO and you're gonna go to jail, right?

Eden:

So no questioning at all of authority.

Michael:

Yeah. Well that's just it, questioning, you know, which isn't necessarily even pushing back. Like I could be legitimately like trying to understand what's going on or, and that could be met sometimes, as I'm saying, like very abusively like this, you know. These sort of power trips that happen. And so, so yeah, there's some regular polygraphs, right? And you know, basically, they asked checking to see if you are following your conditions and stuff. If you fail a polygraph, they aren’t…

Eden:

Polygraphs aren't, they're not very accurate.

Michael:

No, no, they're not, right and a failed polygraph is not supposed to be like grounds for any sanctions, although in reality it kinda can be. Usually I think what it means is, like you then get scrutinized much more heavily, right? OK, so some other things I'm not allowed: to travel out of the county unless I get an explicit pass, which actually is very relevant right at the moment, right? So I've been talking with my CCO about going on a honeymoon in San Juan here in May, right, or so this month, and for two weeks. And my CCO was like “yeah you can go, yeah no problem.

I looked at everything, everything looks good.” But I still don't have a pass for it, and so I'm in this weird dance where I'm like OK, like I gotta, gonna ask again for this pass. But I can't ask too much, because then you know, I can't be pushy. I can't be seen as, you know, trying to, you know, control or like push them on my CCO, but like there's a very real chance that like…and I actually had this, I was denied any travel for two and half years, including to visit my father who had a cancer diagnosis, right? And I wasn't ever told “no, you can't go.” I was always told “Yes, sure, fine, send me—”You know, it was, I was just ignored and not actually given the pass, right. So just continually told, “yeah, you'll be able to go, send it to me in e-mail” and then, no follow up, right? And I can't actually get the thing that I must have legally to leave the county right? So that happened for 2 1/2 years straight, right? And right now, like after having that experience I’m like, okay, what's going to so, you know, sort of live on that with that kind of anxiety and like what's going to happen? But, uh, yeah, there's that. There's, so I’m not allowed to use pornography, which again is pretty reasonable. However, some polygraphers like to have very interesting definitions of what they think pornography is. Sometimes they say, like any nudity at all is considered pornography.

Eden:

Yeah, there are a lot of movies that fall under that category.

Michael:

Right, yeah. I think like, technically I don't think this would actually hold up, but technically like I'm… I remember having a conversation with the CCO at one point about, you know, being able to watch movies with any nudity in it and my CCO wouldn't tell me no but also wouldn't say yes is playing sort of this game around this right? Because he probably can't tell me no, but, at any rate, sort of what we arrived at is I close my eyes if there’s any nudity in a movie, and my partner tells me when it's over. It’s really weird, as an adult to do this, right? And it's bizarre. I mean therapy, you know, I’ve talked to some therapists about this. The same therapist I had, you know, in my treatment and they're like, yeah, this is weird, like I don't know what, but…

Eden:

Well, so there's there are some other countries that are more comfortable with having like, children's nudity, but not in a sexual way. Which is it’s own thing.

Michael:

Yes. That would be a pretty significant issue. I don't mean personally like being triggered, it actually isn't, but how that would be perceived.

Eden:

Yeah.

Michael:

Yeah, would be pretty darn serious. You know, for a long time I couldn't vote. That's recently been restored to me. I cannot serve on a jury, that's unfortunate. I cannot contact anybody who is currently in total confinement. So like I've been wanting to write letters to prisoners.

Eden:

Right, showing support.

Michael

And like very interested in supporting like people on death row, that sort of thing. I'm not allowed to do that, right. But the biggest thing really, like the largest concerns, it’s not so much like what liberties do I have? It's really the fact, that, you know, I mentioned earlier, I have five years suspended sentence, right? I have five years in prison. And in that environment, as a trans individual right, hanging over my head for the rest of my life. And it's really, like, it's the terror of that right? And the thing is, if I'm ever accused of anything, like, I go into jail immediately. There's no process for this. They don't have to be anything supporting this, right? I just go into jail. I sit there until I have a hearing, and that can take up to a month. I've heard horror stories of it taking up to like half a year, but honestly, in my experience, I've seen other people go through this, [it’s} about 30 days or so you can get in front of the judge, have your hearing. Meanwhile, right, I've lost a lot right? And I lose my job, you know, possibly could lose my house, yeah. You know, I lose my income. There's all the stress, you know, with family and, you know, my partner and everything that happens with that, and yeah, I mean that's really, like, that's a scary thing is that I could just be picked up at any moment and also like I, I had one CCO that, and I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier. It was very nasty. And maybe I’ll tell one of those stories.

Eden:

Yeah, I was thinking specifically the time where you had someone stay.

Michael:

Yeah, so I think I was engaged at the time, I’m not sure if I was engaged at the time or if we were just dating, but anyways, my partner at the time or my fiance maybe had a friend or has a friend right and her friend was, I don't know exactly what's going on. I don’t remember how much of a health thing it was and how much of mental health versus physical health thing, but was having some heart issues, like heart palpitations, and was concerned about her health and didn't want to be alone. My partner had recently moved in with me and had previously lived with this friend and wanted to be there for support for her friend, and so she asked me if her friend could stay with us overnight. So her friend slept on the couch. My partner was with me in my room we slept. We also had two other people in the house, was living in that House with somebody and we had a renter. And yeah, there's that. And then I worked from home that day and I stayed, just kind of watched over her friend, right. So she was kind of sitting on the couch in the area and I was over in the dining room working at the table. And so my CCO comes rushing over. Didn't say how he had heard about her having stayed over, I think he did, I'm not sure how, I'm not sure if it was my housemate had maybe reported something or I actually had some suspicion of my phones being monitored, but I don't know, I really don't. At any rate, right like? You got some idea something that's going on and rushed over and, you know, I came into the door and he was like “what's going on? Why are you sitting here with this woman?” Was very alarmed and evidently like I think he, you know, he thought I was being inappropriate in some way.

Eden:

And there is no rule… The rules for you are about children. Not about adults.

Michael:

Yeah, nothing about it at all. Well, the only thing is, you have to bring any romantic partner in for approval before, and that was actually interesting. Brief segue: when I met my partner before, so we met on a vacation right and hit it off and before I could go on a date after that, not only did I have to, I actually disclosed that weekend when we met, right? But not only did I have to disclose, but she had to come in and meet my CCO and my CCO ended up reading, it was a probable cause statement about why they picked me up. Which I want to be really clear about: the only thing in my probable case file is my testimony against myself, right? Like there was no other evidence or testimony or anything, except what I've said. And so they are reading a statement of things that I said about myself, um, to her, you know, so that she could make a decision about whether or not she wanted to be in a relationship with me.

Eden:

And you had just met.

Michael:

Yeah, well she refused for a while and we weren't allowed to date until, so it's like…

Eden:

She refused, meaning your CO? She refused or your partner refused?

Michael:

No, my partner did not want to meet because it's really intimidating going in.

Eden:

There we go, okay.

Michael:

To meet with an officer, right? Like she barely knew me. It's like “why would I want to go into the Department of Corrections and sit down in a secure facility across the desk with the corrections officer and I don't even know you, so we can go on a date.”

Eden:

Yeah, and also, what do you specify as a date…

Michael:

We wanted to go to the movies, right?

Eden:

Right, like hanging out and a date, is—

Michael:

Well, and in fact she's like okay, well forget this, can't we just be casual? Can we just hang out and the like…it was all this huge issue, right, you know. Not even like having any like romantic, you know, overtures or anything. It's just like, yeah it was crazy…And yeah, she ended up going in right and we did that process. But yeah, like this is a real barrier to getting into relationship, anyway. So there's that context, right? Yeah, something that I do, have to do, right? And so I think the concern was that: okay, there's a woman that stayed over at my house. I don't know. Maybe we had sex or something, right? Like this is what I think is maybe is in the head of my CCO. So, like he rushes over and forced me at that point to disclose to this woman right there and then. The story that he gave was like: okay, like I'm not allowed to be alone—and he tells me at this point, it's first time I hear this— I'm not allowed to be alone with a woman who doesn't know my offense, okay. This was never given to me as a condition. And then in fact, later on, like, it's still not a condition that I have, right? You know, I have a list of enumerated conditions from DOC of things I have to, like, this is not one of them. And I have that list now because I'm like, OK, like I need to know, what do I have to do. Let me see this list and it's not on it. But anyways, yeah, he was freaked out right? And I guess I get it, I mean, he has concerns, right? I mean, to some extent, let's just think about like where he's at. How is he supposed to do stuff, right? Like what sort of things is he actually supposed to be watching out for, right? Like we really have to ask these questions. What's the point in him actually doing anything? And you know, if you assume that there's a point in him doing something, then maybe this is the sort of thing he needs to watch out for, right? Anyways, yeah, so he forced me to disclose on the spot, which I did. Turned out well in the end, actually, I got somebody in my corner, right? She was really horrified at what, you know, Department of Correction had just done, like “I'm so sorry that you had to go through that,” right, that’s how this ended out. But you know, I was trying to tell my CCO, I'm like is, is this really the right thing to do right now? Like she's having some heart trouble, right? Like this is the whole reason why she's here, to keep things nice and calm, right? Like it's not really good for her. It’s like “no, we have to. If you don’t, we're going to, you know, we're going to tell her, but like you need to tell you know,” sort of like…okay, well, you know, I didn't really feel like I had a choice, no matter right? I possibly didn't, I mean the threat here is, you know, I go to jail if I don't, right? I don’t think they told me that at this point, but you know, like it's always in my head, right? And yeah, so that happened, you know, we had quite some back and forth with my CCO for some time after this, and he even got to the point where, like he asked me, you know it's like, “does your fiancé know that this woman is here?” And I said “yes, she asked me to stay with her.” And when I said that right? And this is part of the problem right like? What do you see in my experience, right? It's like there is no defense. Like nothing is defensible, every answer becomes another problem. And in this case where this went was “Well then, if your fiancée is a problem for you, is a bad influence on you, right?” Because they're convinced this is a wrong thing to happen, right? If your fiancé is a bad influence on you, then we can take this relationship away, right? And this is what I live with, right? So I, so the problem is it's not so much “I got these conditions,” right, it's nothing about that at all. It's about the power imbalance, and the automatic assumption that what I'm doing must be wrong. And also huge, the stakes are too high, right? If something goes wrong for me, I lose everything. I could be told that I'm no longer allowed to be around my wife. I'm sorry I don't know why I used that word, we don't use it that word. Be around my spouse. I can be told I have to move out of this house. I can be told I have to quit my job. I can be sent to jail and up for revocation, right? So up to spend this five years in prison, you know. These things just happen. There is a process. Eventually, you know, I do get to go to court and make a case. But even if I win, things are kind of stacked against me already, like it's hard, right? But even if I win the process of going through that experience, right, of being faced with losing everything right of people around me, being faced with all that stress of me not being able to go to work because I'm incarcerated, with, you know, not being able to pay bills because I'm in, you know, for those 30 days or however long, until I get to make my, you know. The stakes are too high, right? And I live with this every day, right? And I live in the fear of oh, my God, what's… because I've experienced some of it. I mean, it's rare, there's been a few times in 13 years, which if you look at it’s “okay, that's not too much.” But still, how much longer am I going to live in my life? How many more of these am I going to need to go through, and like how many more can I get through? I don't know. I feel like I'm just waiting for everything to collapse on my head.

Eden:

Yeah, well, even if these things aren't happening all the time, the fear is always present.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Eden:

I was noticing how when you were growing up, grew up with an alcoholic violent father, a big brother who picked on you, schoolmates who picked on you, someone who raped you. And then you grow up, and the legal system is one that involves harassment, for instance, your time in jail, and also harassment and threat from people who work within the system.

Michael:

Yeah, and there's just like casual, it's casual, right? Well, maybe the one guy is malicious, but like most often I think it's just casual, like they just don't consider there's any problem. I had an experience…the therapist, he told me over and over again, it's like I have a like a confession problem. I talked about too many things that don't matter, I over disclosed, they told me, right. An example this: I had a CCO and I was disclosing of, you know, well, I was just terrified, right? Like I'm dealing with all these things and I saw an ad that was triggering to me, right? I want to say like initially it wasn’t triggering. I saw an ad that was, about prehistoric, you know, sea monsters, some silly thing, oh look. I clicked on that and then it ended up being one of those, like ad holes, like taking me to all sorts of things, right. And there was another ad that was like triggering about, you know, some like sexy selfies or something like that, right? And I saw that and I was like, oh crap. Like I can’t, you know, I need to get out of this, right, and I did. I just reported it to my CCO because it was very much what we're trained to do, right. Okay, just, you know, dump everything and have polygraphs too, like right away. So, just so you know, there's no nudity or anything and right, but it was salacious. I mentioned this and then my CCO went and did a Google search for sexy selfies and found a whole bunch of pornography that she then showed me, right, and it's like what the heck? And just like with all this anger and bitterness in her voice, it's just like “does this look like” and I'm like this is not what I told you. But also like…I want to be very honest, right. That was sexual abuse, right? Like from a legal perspective, it's a little hard because like she didn't do it, I don't believe at all, like it was not done with…she had no like sexual interest in it, right so? But like it was punishment, yeah.

Eden:

She forced you to look at pornography.

Michael:

Yeah. She turned a screen to me and showed me that, you know, and I looked away you know, and…also, you know the experience I had I was raped by a woman as a child, right? Like this, this is not, okay, you know and also somebody that has all this authority over me. This was terrifying. And it was just casual, right, like, I doubt she gave it a second thought. And also, this is what I have to deal with, you know, this…and the fact is like this is what I deserve, right? Needless to say, I don't report stuff like that, because I don't need to, you know. It's like, whatever, you know, but I like I'm not going to set myself up for abuse. I mean similarly, sorry I got a little bit of axe to grind, I just want to say one more thing. You know, like I also give regular UA’s right urine analysis, I have to, give samples, right? I have to pee in a cup, drug testing sort of thing, right, and like one day I couldn’t. I'm in the DOC office and the staff member just gets pissed at me, so while I am still exposed, throws the door open, right, like, exposed to the office, right? And again, it's just casual. So anyways, yeah. So this is the problem, it's not can I, what are my liberties, can I do this thing, can I do that thing? It's that I'm exposed to people who hate me and are, just think I’m worthless, and they get to do whatever they want with me for the rest of my life.

Eden:

Are you ever afraid, with your advocacy work, that DOC will go after you for doing advocacy work.

Michael:

Yeah, a little bit. Honestly though I feel like I have good cover for that right. I feel like we still have, that we should still have, strong enough traditions in this country, right? Like that would be protected. I told them I mentioned it. I don't think I don't think my current CCO know. Because you wouldn’t, I don't just go, “Hey, by the way, I do, you know,” because that looks like something else, that looks like I'm sort of threatening or like I'm trying to do something right. So, and again, this is the dance I play every day, right, like how does this come across, right ? And I have to think about that because I'm always suspect, right? So I'm always playing this game of “what do I say? what don't I say? how do I manage this relationship with these people who have total power over me?”

Going back to the question, no, I don't think it's going to come back directly on, but it does affect me. So I've got monitoring stuff on my computer, right? That's just part of some of the things I have to do right? It will trigger, it will come up and say like there's an issue for all sorts of things, but certainly anything that has a word sex in them, right? Including anything that has the word sex offence, right, or sex offende, you know, if I, so we do some work with the Sex Offender Policy Board. If I clicked on something that said Sex Offender Policy Board, it would say, hey, there is a problem in Michael’s computer usage, right? So yeah, it certainly limits what I do, right, because I don't want to have those conversations, right? Like I want to keep things clean, but every now and then like there's just things that like really like I have no idea. I guess I think I talked to you about this one, like, I get surprised where…so there's this new show on PBS, it's like PBS voices or whatever. And one of their episodes was entitled: How is the Gay Rodeo Different. “Gay” apparently is one of those words that my software doesn't like and so that came up as…How how they put it? It’s highly questionable. Because they talked about the gay rodeo. That one really pissed me off. I had to call somebody in advocacy around this, I'm like, did you know there's that too right? But also, I mean I'm sitting that terror and I sit in the terror of what sort of things the software is going to say about me. And so there’s a very narrow scope of things I do online. It also keeps me out of recovery things online too. To be honest, I had some software at one point that was taking screenshots so it would get screenshots of people that I was meeting with. It's not a thing right now, but like that is something that I dealt with and working with people that are really interested in, you know, anonymity and privacy and stuff. And actually I would say, okay, again on some effects, like I don't work with people. I can't guarantee the privacy, especially right now and with the pandemic, right, everything's electronic, and I have all this monitoring, right.

Eden:

Yeah, I so I have software on my devices. My choice, like, I decided to do that. But the things that it picks up on can be pretty wild. For instance, any sexual recovery thing as you said. The word suicide. And I did realize, like I had to change things in the software to make it so that it didn't take things from messages and things like that. Fortunately, the people that I had connected to it are, I trust them, but I was like “Oh no, I don't want you,” you know, I was texting with someone in recovery who was suicidal. So it wasn't even related about sex, it was suicidality. And my accountability partners would see the texts of these people, and their names. And I remember fortunately I was able to go through because I have some amount of control over this and I can say do not look at my texts or my emails, or like anything that has…that was never my problem.

Michael:

Yeah, yeah. Well and this is getting sent to law enforcement right? so there's privacy concerns all over the place, right, with monitoring of third party individuals right? I don't know, yeah so, I live with that, right, with that fear a lot. It's hard, I mean it's hard not being able to move on. Which isn't to say like I want to forget because I don't, right. I want to, I mean really, mostly I want to be in community, right. But yeah, I'm in a place where I'm terrified to go to any event that would have the word community in it because of how it might be received. “Oh, community, huh? What kids were there?” Right?

Eden:

I know you weren’t able to visit your partner's church recently.

Michael:

Uh no, we were looking at starting to go to church together, not that she was at a church ready, but yeah, well, yeah. I mean, that's kind of another interesting question. We probably could go to church but the way that they, that my CCO wanted to do that is, I write, what they call a safety plan. Basically say how I go to church and what conditions am I allowed to be there and what do I do in this case, that case this case, blah, right? I've done this. I mean I've lived this way for many years and this is what I did in treatment. I think it has some sense. It is reasonable and like really kind of good at training somebody to look at what situations you're in and like knowing how to navigate things and keeping myself out of what could be dangerous situations. Not that I feel that I pose a danger to people, but more like how do I keep myself out of situations in which people might get freaked out about if they found out about me after the fact, right. How do I keep myself safe basically from society? It's helpful for that. But at one point, like, literally like I had her say between 30 and 50 different scenarios like this. You know, what I do when I'm grocery shopping? What I do when I'm just out shopping normally? What do I do in a movie theater? What I do on a bus? What do I do this when I'm generally walking around out on the street? What do I do? Every scenario that I could possibly have in my life. And each one of these, what do I do sort of questions, right, like, there’s anywhere between 10 and 20 different points right? These all become, this is contract then I have the live by, which I'm legally bound to. And if we just do the math on this, this is hundreds and hundreds of rules that I’m assumed to take and this is a problem for me in a number of ways. One is I kind of talked about being anxious, right? And if you say like this is very anxiety producing for me all the rules, following all the rules, right? Like, how do I remember them, right, it's…Like yeah, I'm not overestimating things here, like, I don't know. Like 300 to 600 individual rules that I have for all these scenarios. And like which scenario’s pertinent now, that was really overwhelming. I don't have that in my life now, right. That ended when I finished treatment and actually I went through process of treatment where we wrote what we called the lifetime boundaries, the one set of things. Very small, limited set of things that I have for everything in my life, right, and I did that and I wrote that out. I got this signed by my therapist that was great and then I took it to DOC and like “we don't care, we are not interested at all.” My CCO wouldn’t even look at it, like “I don’t care what your therapist said.” Right, and so I'm like, okay, so like they never acknowledged it as not anything about, like what I actually lived by. It was pretty simple. But yeah, I don't have that and I just can't bear the thought of going back to that. I don't want to bring that into my life. That means I don't do things like go to church, which mightgive me some scrutiny. I do go to a lot of things, I mean I go grocery shopping, obviously right. Nobody's requiring me, right, now to have like special dispensation for that, but I did, I had to have special dispensation for like seven years, right, to do anything in public, yeah? But also I also took longer in therapy than a lot of people do because I initially had to and kind of liked it. I mean like it was kind of safe for me, but actually looking back at it I have, I had a lot more freedom when I was in therapy than since I've been out, I vave a lot less because I don't have somebody to advocate for me, right? DOC really likes having therapists because DOC, they can be sued by the public for failing to properly supervise somebody, like if I went out and did something, that could be held liable. But a therapist goes and advocates, well the therapist can be held liable. So, I had much more freedom when I was in therapy.

Eden:

Yeah, it sounds like a lot of fear of threat.

Michael:

I mean, I'll acknowledge like part of that is this is, I mean, if I had to describe a little bit my problem, some of my some of the difficulties in my life that I faced which have caused problems for me right in, like dealing with my mental health like a lot of that has been around, right, my diagnosis with PTSD and generalized anxiety, that sort of thing. So yeah, I'm reactive, let me pull that out. I've also never met somebody else in the same sort of situation I have that doesn't share my sort of anxiety, right? Yeah, I mean it's also shows like, yeah, we got some freaking PTSD, it's traumatic. We don't know, it's just a sense that anything can happen at any moment and nobody’s going to care.

Eden:

What I was also realizing was that you are not the only one who's afraid.

Michael:

Well, in many ways, I mean there's other people in situations like me, but yeah, so I got to think everybody in my orbit.

Eden:

So, there's everybody in your orbit. But in that moment I was thinking you were saying the CCO, the DOC.

Michael:

Oh yeah.

Eden:

Because they can get sued and I was realizing in that moment that they are also afraid.

Michael:

Oh yeah, I mean. DOC doesn't want to supervise me. They don’t, yeah, I mean, they've said as much, my CCO to me directly, but I mean, organizationally, they've come out, and the Colonel Sentencing Task Force, you know, was just looking at, you know, changing a lot of sentencing laws and stuff. They, like, they want to get rid of lifetime supervision, like this is not helpful. It's funny, you know, in one side of the mouth the quote was like okay, you know, I've been shown in the literature that anything over five years actually leads to more recidivism, right? And then they turn around and ask for 10 years, but

I mean, 10 is still great, like I'm on 13 already right, and counting. And, yeah.

Eden:

Yeah, sounds like there's one way you all have the same opinion, which is that lifetime supervision, you both want lifetime supervision be done with.

Michael.

Yeah. Well, I mean the problem is with the legislature, right? Politically it's really nasty. Anybody who votes for this one can really face a lot of public backlash, or at least even if they don't face like direct public backlash, it can become like dirt, right. Like it's easy to, you know, start slinging mud like “Oh yeah, well, they voted for the sex offenders, rapists, let them get out,” right? And then there's this fear, there's this fear of, you know the monster that's, that just can't wait to get their hands on another child. And at the same time they don't seem to understand what actually ends up happening to those very children.

Outro Music and Next Week

Eden:

Next week in Part 2 of my conversation with Michael.

Michael:

Clip 1: I didn't have the capacity to deal with this horror, right? What happened to me as a child.

Clip 2: When all we have are the words monster, we can't heal.

Clip 3: My story's not just my story, it's other people's stories as well, right? I use my name, and then I say, “yeah, I abused my daughter,” then I'm also putting my daughter story out there. And I think there's a lot of care to be had. At the same time, what ends up happening is we are so afraid of how people out there in the world are going to take our story and use it against us that we never say anything.

Clip 4: For good or ill, I've always been very beholden to the concept of speaking the truth. I believe in the power of truth as a mechanism of healing and want to see more healing in the world.