Everybody be good okay?

I spent new years in a place called Bundeswehrkrankenhaus

German is certainly the most language of all time!

It was new years and I was in Germany because I was supposed to be

touring Europe and seeing if I wanted to try to establish a life there

Id been saving and planning and looking forward to it

for like years and instead, I ended up in isolated quarantine at that hospital.

For the first week that I was there, the doctors didn't know what was

wrong with me. The leading theory was

monkey pox and they were doing all these tests pumping me full of like random

antibiotics to see what would take.

The night before, my friend Estelle had taken me to two or 3 different hospitals at like 1 am cus

I was just like exploding, I'm not gonna get into details but like it was gross I looked deformed.

Finally a hospital took me in cus I started having like a crazy seizure and I couldnt breathe and I

I look to the corner of the room Estelle is crying, I can feel a tear rolling

down my cheek, and I’m like watching myself

down there. The nurses are cutting off my favorite hoodie, my little sister got it for me actually.

They were just injecting me with shit, they were asking why I had tits yknow, I didn't think

of it that way for a long time but it actually was really traumatizing, sometimes the memory of that

night flashes back to me and I like that vibrating emoji yknow?

I got to leave Germany on January 18th, and I decided I

just wanted to go home,cancel the rest of the trip I wanted to see my partner, so we made plans to fly

in around the same time, we had flown out the same day, from the same airport

they were going back to Korea, and I was headed to London, so we decided to

meet back up, spend a few days at a hotel and be happy that I was alive y’know?

I flew into London, and stayed at the Radisson Blue hotel next to Stansted airport

I was really glad to be alive, I couldn’t wait to see my partner, couldn’t wait to see my friends

my family, couldn’t waaait to eat some good food finally because this mushy green goop is what they were serving me

in there.

God bless the Germans and that hospital staff especially they were so nice but goddamn

food is NOT their bag.

I decided to celebrate by myself in my hotel room with a whiskey sour, it was my favorite drink

at the time, I was talking to my partner, I made a joke they didn't like, and they told me

they didn't like it. Usually, I'm pretty decent about handling conflict, in a calm respectul manner, but this

time, I dont know if it was the drink, or the stress of the last few weeks but, it turned into

a fight, and that was the end of us, and I regretted it immediately.

A month later, february 18th, my birthday, its twilight I'm liek sort of mostly asleep, and I hear their voice

happy birthday baby, the exact cadence they would say it in and

I wake up with a start, I thought they were next to me and it had

all just been a really bad dream.

I remembered yesterday, having this conversation, where I said to them, that I was genuinely

so grateful and glad, for every single horrible thing that had ever happened to me

all the bad touches, all the beatings,my first girlfriend

sleeping with a couple of my friends, all of it, it was fine because it led me

to them. I wondered if I'd really ever loved anyone I'd dated before because it just didn't feel

the way it did with this person yknow?

It blows my mind that something so significant and anchoring and all encompassing could just

disappear like that over the span of like 30 minutes.

Thats insane

I decided that I needed a change of scenery, I had way too many memories where I was living so

I moved, luckily a friend of mine said I could stay at their place for a while, they let me

sleep in their walk in closet we used to call it the glue trap cus of that one meme yknow

Eventually I got my own place, and I realized its exactly the kind of neighborhood that we used

to talk about wanting to move to in chicago. In exactly the kind of 2 bedroom apartment, because

I couldnt stand the way they used snore and grind their teeth in bed so we'd sleep in

seperate rooms yknow

now its just me, and this living room I just cant bring myself to furnish, I've been here like 4

months now, it just always felt like I wouldn't be around long enough for it to be worth having anything.

We don't talk anymore and neither do my family and I, I mean I tried really hard to look past all

the beatings all the screaming, all the vitriol, all of it, I started a group chat for my family

and one day my dad posted this picture in it from when i was a year old, I remember this, and

actually physically seeing myself as a kid, knowing that even at this age, I was still getting

my ass beat, just broke me man idk, I couldn't talk to them any more, not only just for that but

well, incredibly religious african families and trans kids just dont mix yknow, I guess they got

to my little sister too cus she just wouldnt stop texting me these long long crazy messages about

jesus and stuff I figured they were pressuring her to get through to me cus they couldnt reach me

so I had to close off that channel of communication too.

So now it was just me yknow, but I could take that on the chin, the weight was getting really

heavy but it had heavy for years, whats 100 more pounds right, I decided to follow my passions

instead of doing things the sensible way, I became a pastry chef, and I enjoy my job, and it wasnt

all so bad all my neighbors in my new building are really awesome and they're good to me

Im in a new city I got new friends, I got a good job yknow, I'm gonna hop on a dating app, I'm gonna

open up to people I'm gonna give love another

chance, boom gets SA'd

thats okay I can take that on the chin too, nothin new, not the first time whats 50 more pounds

its okay because I'm gonna have health insurance in like three weeks and I can therapy

and get the surgeries Ive been wanting to get for years and

be free and be happy

except now, the manager at work thats apparently known for making people quit has zoned in on me and I might

be forced to quit, or get fired, like a week before the insurance kicks

and its really silly, really petty shit and I should just thug it out and take it on the chin but, I guess I aint

got it in me to take on one more pound, I've been tired for a long time.

When I was a kid I used to love watching this show on NatGeo the legend of mick dodge, it was this guy, exmilitary

he did the thing, he was like nope and he fucked off into the woods, I didn't know until I watched this show that

there's a rain forest in America, up in the pacific north west

I became obsessed with this place, it looked so pretty on the show

I would always tell Andrew, one of my best mates, hey man, I want my ashes buried there, you gotta take me there

no matter what. I would often tell that to my ex too.

They wanted their ashes pressed into garnet if it went that way

I wanted to buried in that rain forest, we made the deal yknow

I totally forgot about that until recently, yknow? I've been thinkin about it more turns out its not the most

expensive plane ticket

and every time i'm getting yelled at at work over shit like making the chocolate chip cookies before the keylime pie

or using 3 eggs to make my breakfast

all I can think about is going to the rain forest, and just lying down for a while, or finding a cliff and sitting

down at the edge of it just kicking my feet while looking down over the edge.

and I think about calling up andy, hey dude guess where I am

and tellin him he wont have to take me there any more cus thats where Im gonna be at already yknow

I think hed react the same way as when I told him I went to this place called Winnetka, that we always

used to talk about going to because we loved winnetka bowling league

Winnetka sssssssucks actually.

I’ll be in the rain forest.

How does one piece end?