Heyyyy readers. Here's a treat. The Office of Publication and Dissemination has a series of Dr J's and Melissa's Journal entries for you; we'll be releasing them one-by-one. Here's the first, from our resident shrunken geriatrician:
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Dr J Entry 1 — Morning
Thurs Nov 21st, 9:05 AM
Okay, so - apparently I’m journaling.
As luck would have it, I had my scheduled appointment in the “Behavioral and Relationships Dynamics Center” first thing this morning. After I mentioned what had transpired between Melissa and me yesterday, our therapist Ani Chou - who didn’t seem as shocked as I thought she might, hearing that Melissa’s pheromones were what had been shrinking me - had suggested something different for today’s visit. Rather than the (I still can’t believe it myself haha) Regression Therapy that I’d agreed to do, we spent the time of my visit exploring how Melissa and I were going to proceed. As an exercise, she suggested journaling. Not suggested suggested - more like the calm, professional version of “this would be good for you, Jay, and I’ll be disappointed in you if you don’t do it.” She said writing things down might help me “externalize the cognitive dissonance.” Which sounds like something you code for on an insurance claim.
I told her I don’t journal. She smiled and said, “You’ve also never been biologically recontextualized by your partner’s ectohormone system.”
Point taken.
So here I am, typing this into the Notes app on my new phone, which I’m not even sure counts. Is journaling defined by paper? Intent? Vulnerability? If this turns out to be a technicality, I’d like it noted that I tried.
Oh yeah my phone.
It was here, sitting on my desk when I got to my office this morning - after waking up in Lakshmi’s childhood bedroom (yes, next to Lakshmi), eating a very gentle breakfast of porridge that Anika was nice enough to make with my protein drink, and being asked three separate times if I was sure I was okay. It was sitting on my desk. Neatly placed. Face down. Charged.
It looks exactly like my old phone. Same model. Same color. The ‘Bebihon’ from Mazafon. Basically like a high-tech baby monitor, to replace the one I’d thrown out the car window yesterday.
I would, in fact, had said it was the same phone, except that it’s, uh… smaller.
Not dramatically. Just enough that my thumb now reaches the far edge without stretching. Just enough that it sits more comfortably in my hand. Just enough that my first thought was: Oh. This fits better. Good for smaller hands.
Which I did not enjoy thinking.
I don’t remember ordering it. I don’t remember asking Marisela or anyone else in IT to get me one. I don’t remember anyone mentioning it. I do remember throwing my old phone out of the car yesterday like a teenager having a tantrum, so maybe somebody here was just being proactive for me.
Anyway, so. Notes app. Here we go: let’s journal.
Dr. Chou said not to worry about structure. Just to write what comes up. She said I could stop anytime.
She also said - very carefully - that she wouldn’t ask to see it. That whatever I write would stay private.
I turned the phone over in my hands, considering who may have set this up for me, and chose to believe her.
Before I start free-associating myself into a puddle, I should probably note that this isn’t coming out of nowhere.
This morning over my aggressively gentle porridge I talked with Lakshmi about what I was supposed to do from here. Properly talked, not danced around it, not joked away the fact that I was being molded by Melissa’s pheromones. She didn’t push. She just laid things out. Calmly, like someone used to thinking about consequences (unlike, maybe, the Amazon that is her friend, my girlfriend, and the administrative director of where we both worked).
She said there are basically three paths in front of me.
She didn’t number them, but I’m going to.
Option one: I leave Melissa.
She didn’t sugarcoat it. This would mean ending things cleanly, if such a thing is even possible anymore. Removing myself from her influence, her proximity, her biology. Letting whatever process is happening… stop. Or slow. Or stabilize. Everyone would be sad to see me go, she said - sounding like it was just assumed that it would mean me leaving Far Horizons, not Melissa.
Even writing that, I can feel the ache in my chest. Because the thing is - I love her. I really do. That hasn’t changed. If anything, that’s the problem. Leaving her wouldn’t feel like escaping danger; it would feel like amputating something vital. Necessary, maybe. Health-preserving. But brutal. And there’s no guarantee it would even work, given how entangled we already are.
Option two: I submit.
Lakshmi didn’t use that word, but I will.
This is the path of least resistance. The one where I stop fighting, stop questioning, stop pretending I can outthink what’s happening to my body. Where I let Melissa’s instincts lead and accept whatever shape she needs or wants me to be. Smaller. Needier. Dependent. As she grows bigger. And stronger. And more important.
There was a long pause after this one. Lakshmi watched my face carefully.
Because there’s a part of me - an ugly, quiet but honest part - that finds this option…appealing. Easy. Exciting in a way I don’t like admitting to. It would mean no more decisions. No more fear of falling short. Just being held, managed, contained. Wanted, but kept.
But Lakshmi asked the question I couldn’t avoid: would that still be love? Or would it just be comfort wearing love’s clothes? I don’t know, Journal - what do you think?
Option three was the hardest to hear.
She called it “loving Melissa and yourself as for what you both are becoming, not for as you wish you’d stay.”
Staying with her. Choosing her. But not blindly. Accepting that whatever Melissa is becoming is bigger than just our relationship - and that someone close to her, someone she genuinely loves and trusts (ie: me-slash-yours truly), might need to help guide that growth. Shape it. Temper it. Sounds great but what would happen to me along the way?
Lakshmi didn’t say sacrifice, but it hovered there anyway.
Because we knew this path would mean giving up pieces of myself willingly. Trading autonomy for some influence. Becoming - Lakshmi’s words, not mine - “a stabilizing presence.” A partner in something that looks less like a romantic relationship between two coworkers and more like…well, I joked, weakly, that it sounded like I’d be one of the first prophets of (haha) Melissacism.
She didn’t laugh, maybe because the joke had landed a little too close to the truth. She just said - and I remember this word-for-word - “You might be uniquely positioned to make sure she does not become something the world can not live with. Instead, maybe you can help us make her into something that the world can not live without.”
Which is a hell of a thing to hear over breakfast. I didn’t say amen, but I didn’t argue either - I knew what she meant. As much as we all love her, Melissa is a bit of a wild card. I could be a stabilizing influence, a moral check, if I was strong enough to remain one.
So, yeah - those are my options: flee, give in, or get to work. Yikes. It’s weird to see them written down. It’s not an easy choice, and I don’t know if any of them are the right one. Certainly none of them are safe.
Ani Chou says not to rush clarity. That insight comes in layers.
So. What revelation comes first, from this journaling? I guess the first thing is this: I don’t feel like myself. Which is obvious. I mean, I caught my reflection in the glass wall of the main entrance earlier - distorted a little, but not enough to lie. The coat that Lakshmi had helped me into looked longer than it should. My shoulders sat so low inside it. I had the very clear, very unhelpful thought that I looked like a child wearing his father’s clothes.
But people were passing. No one else reacted. No double takes, no whispers. Which almost made it worse.
I keep waiting for the moment when it stabilizes. When someone - Melissa, anyone - says, “Okay, this is the size you are now.” But no one does, and I’m afraid no one ever will. Everything is ongoing, changing, progressing.
“Dynamic”
That’s the word they like.
I built my life on being the steady one. The person whose body and brain did what it was told. Who could work late, carry stress, make decisions, absorb other people’s fear without leaking any of my own. I was proud of that. Not loudly. Just… privately. It was the bargain I made with myself: I’ll hold everything together, and in return I get to be myself.
And now I’m not sure what part of that bargain is still in effect.
I don’t know if I’m afraid of becoming small, exactly. I think I’m afraid of disappearing. Not dying. Not being erased. Just being redefined so thoroughly that the man I was becomes irrelevant. Obsolete. A prototype? Maybe.
Ani Chou asked me this morning - very gently, for her - what I thought I was losing.
I told her “autonomy”. That felt true at the time.
Now, typing this, I wonder if what I meant was authorship. The feeling that I’m the one writing the story of what happens to me. That my body isn’t a document other people annotate.
I don’t know when that changed. I do know that when Lakshmi handed me my coat this morning, she buttoned it for me without asking. And I let her. I didn’t even think to stop her, that’s how automatic this has all become.
That’s probably enough for now. Dr. Chou said to pace myself, journaling. It actually came easier than I thought.
I can stop anytime, right?
I’ll stop here.
---J
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