Archives for category: The Big 5
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Foe , Faux, or Windmill pt2

May 21, 2018 //
2

Well, Monday comes around too soon after a busy weekend. The down-and-back to visit with friends and with my Traveling Partner was… interesting. Worth doing. Strange. In some moments just flat-out weird as the evening developed.  Good party. Good weekend. Weird vibe.

Mental illness doesn’t play nicely – with its victims, or with their loved ones. Let’s note that this is a true thing, and then set that aside.

I never actually slept on Saturday night. It was a huge effort for my Traveling Partner and I to get even an hour together to chill and hang out. It wasn’t the party that kept him busy, it was the on-again-off-again intensifying spiral of OPD generated by his other partner’s mental health challenges more often than not, but also just real-life hosting-a-party crap that comes up over a weekend (“hey, is there more water?”, “hey, I cut myself – where are the band aids?”, “hey, where can I park?”, “hey, what’s the wi-fi password?”, “hey, is the party in the house,too, or just outside?”). We finally got a few minutes together to cuddle, to catch up, to talk… in seconds he was fast asleep in my arms. I haven’t spent such a lovely night in a long while, meditating, relaxed, content, cuddled up with my Traveling Partner for a couple hours. I couldn’t sleep. I knew there would be that risk when I went down; I don’t feel physically (or emotionally) safe in that location now,so… No sleep. Still, huge improvement for me, inasmuch as I also didn’t continue to feel anxious once I got there, and the hours of the night passed gently in each other’s arms.

I dozed off once (so close). I woke to a knock on the door. I got up very carefully so as not to wake my partner, stumbled through putting my pants on, and went to see if there was something urgent that needed attention (the medical bag was with us). Nope. I went back to bed. Some little while later, we were wakened with more conviction; a neighbor had started a burn on their property in the very early just-at-daybreak time of morning. The party people, in various stages of intoxication, could see the fire…but couldn’t puzzle out whether it was a legitimate hazard, or not, at that distance. (It was unfathomable that people might actually wake up at such an hour and do actual work or life things. LOL) Farm folks are often up quite early, doing actual work. My Traveling Partner takes a look, says something reassuring. We go back to bed. He’s out like a light in minutes. I doze for a few minutes myself, wake again, and get up and dress for the morning; it was time for coffee, for breakfast, and time to hit the road. “No sleep at all” would mean a narrow window of opportunity to safely make the drive home before fatigue set in.

The drive back was pretty uneventful, and generally efficient and pleasant. I got home in a timely fashion, and messaged my Traveling Partner and concerned friends that I was safely home. I didn’t hear anything back for many hours (because… drama). I am okay with having made such a short trip down and back under the circumstances, and enormously pleased with how I feel today. (Untouched by OPD, and largely unaffected by the mental health issues of a metamour I am easily able to maintain adequate distance from). I am okay right now. I was okay Saturday. It was a good weekend, generally. My self-care was on point. 😀

There was an interesting moment, conversationally, during the party. Worth taking another look at, but maybe not this morning; it’s not relevant, specifically, to this topic, right here. 🙂 This morning? I’m getting ready for a new work week; it’s time to begin again. 😀

Where will the journey take me? What obstacles are in my path? Are they actually obstacles – or do I just need the gate code?

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Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women

Foe, Faux, or Windmill?

May 19, 2018 //
3

My gear is packed. I’m rested. The work week is behind me. The weekend is ahead. My anxiety is through the fucking roof, in spite of there being “nothing wrong” in any literal sense; I am facing my inner demons, today, or at least one small cohort of the mocking hateful little bastards, and I am hoping to come through, if not “victorious”, then at least fairly cognizant just how okay I actually am. That’d actually be a pretty spectacularly big deal.

I survived family violence in my childhood home. I survived domestic violence. I survived the Army, and yes, I survived war. I have, actually, survived all of what life has thrown at me so far – even the good stuff. 🙂 What has lingered are the scars, emotional and physical. The learned limitations. The fears. The background stress of my injured brain insisting something is imminently going to go very very wrong. Scary dangerous wrong. Look out for that hazard right there!! Only… generally? No hazard. PTSD instead.

When things went sideways with my Traveling Partner’s other partner (in poly vernacular, my “metamour”), becoming a mental health crisis of epic proportions, affecting an entire fairly closely associated community, it was also a re-traumatizing event for me. The aftermath was even directly emotionally abusive, specifically targeted to be so, hurtfulness set on “stun”, although the weaponized words and emotions were being launched by a human being fairly obviously not in her right mind at the time, I am human, and I feel. All the feelings. I’ve got my own baggage to carry. Afterward, the easy solution for me has been to just “let all that shit go” and walk on. I do not need (or want) that kind of bullshit in my life, and I have learned to turn away from it.

Not all of life’s decisions are mine to make. Funny how that works. I get to make mine, and I have learned to respect, value, and insist upon my agency. It’s precious to me. On the other hand, I’m not strolling through life utterly alone, here; other people have their lives, too, and their own decisions to make, and they so do make them. I live with those decisions, as well as my own, because we’re all in this together. lol One such decision is to have a birthday party at the very location where “all the bad shit went down”, some weeks after the fact, and almost-but-not-quite as if nothing untoward or unpleasant had even been a thing. Weird. I have trouble wrapping my head around that. Inviting me into that environment seems a tad disrespectful, or even callous, although more likely it is merely ignorant of the potential impact to me, or even more likely still, I am highly regarded, desired good company – which may matter more to all of the non-me people involved. lol I got invited.  …And… I’m an adult, right? My friends are adults, too. We are each having our own experience. Mine says ‘do not walk, run, get as fucking far away from that shit, as far as possible, because you do not want to be there when that mad bitch burns her fucking house down’… but… really? Well. I don’t know, do I? Mental health challenges being what they are, and love being what it is, people do make a fairly wide range of choices when loved ones lose their shit in one flavor of mental health crisis or another. People don’t always turn entirely away. I still don’t get it, myself, at this point in life; I’ve stopped taking abuse. Protestations of love are not enough to keep me in an abusive relationship. That’s non-negotiable…but…

…What’s a “safe distance”? In this instance, specifically, when there is no clear certain threat to me personally of any notable sort, what then? So… I’m doing something occasionally suggested in therapy, and utterly resisted by me. Exposure. Facing my fears, in real life. Making the choice to visit friends, and have a good time, in a physical location that causes me a fuck ton of anxiety and stress… for no obvious reason in this moment (the stress I mean; hanging out with friends does not need reasons, and every moment is a good one for hanging out with friends). This could be a very healing thing for me. It’s fucking hard as hell, though, and I find myself dithering a bit as I prepare to leave for the weekend away. It’s just an overnight, down and back, and a chance to look over some real estate on the way back. This? This is an experience to have.

There are verbs involved. Self-soothing. Taking time out to regain perspective. Practices to practice. This? It’s a test. 🙂 I’m content if I get a “C”… I would like to pass it, though. lol I take a deep breath and relax. I’m aware of the physical pain I am in – and the potential that some measure of that pain is directly related to my emotional well-being in some way. Another breath. I let my shoulders slide back down where they belong. I am okay, right now. The road beyond the driveway is quiet. It’s a good time to get started on this journey.

I am my own cartographer. My choices are my own. I walk my own hard mile. My results may vary; and I have choices. I become what I practice. The woman in the mirror smiles back at me. We’re in this together.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, Free Will, grief, Healthy Living, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words

I’m Not Sure Who I Am, Today

May 18, 2018 //
0

I’m sipping my coffee and smiling. I slept through the entire night. I feel rested. It’s a nice feeling with which to start a Friday.

Tomorrow, although it was not my original plan, I’ll make my way south, see my Traveling Partner, see friends, see a piece of property for sale that could become, perhaps, my own. A busy weekend ahead. A new plan.

There are things about the weekend ahead that don’t feel entirely comfortable for me. I turn it over in my head. Look at all the details from new perspective. Consider them in the context of my values, and my sense of self, and come face to face with the awkward truths of personal growth; I am not who I once was. (To be fair, that’s most likely nearly always at least a little bit true… of most people. It is a consequence of growth and change.) Considering the matter keeps my mind rather busy for some minutes.

Eventually my thoughts move on. They were, after all, only thoughts.

One more work day. A busy weekend. A couple rather long drives. A few hours of rest. Then back at it, with another week of work, then a busy long weekend, with a couple rather long drives… a few hours of rest… an illusion of a break in the routine sufficient to restore lost reserves, but more likely to drain them… then, on the far side of all that… oh fuck, am I kidding me?? The very next weekend after the long Memorial Day weekend is a long festival weekend… A festival, in fact, I have already lost interest in (the line up seems less exciting than I expected it to be)… and don’t know what to do about. Then… my birthday. I feel fatigued just thinking about the next 4 weeks.

…And in case I get cocky about progress in life, and managing my symptoms skillfully… my brain sees an opportunity for a sneak attack, the minute my birthday crosses my mind. “No one really cares about your birthday. Not even as an excuse to party. If you had a party, at your place, no one would come.” I sit in stunned, hurt, silence for a moment, wondering if that “is true”? The fact that it is a thought, and that I am capable of thinking it, doesn’t do anything to validate the truth of it, one way or the other. I can almost feel my chaos and damage, and a horde of tiny inner demons gathering around the edges, waiting for me to begin troubleshooting the painful thought, to begin obsessing over it, and letting it dominate my thinking…

Not today. 🙂 Thoughts, as with emotions, have no substance I don’t give them. No ability to create change until I take action. An uncomfortable thought is what it is – it doesn’t ever have to be more than that. Today, I look one boldly in the face… and shrug it off with an unconvinced and, better still, unconcerned “maybe”. People are people, and they can’t all go everywhere and do all the things, however much they yearn to. This very weekend, I’m having to choose between 3 equally enticing fun-seeming events to party with friends – different groups of friends, in entirely different locations. I can only do one. Do I hold the other friends in less regard? Do I think of them less fondly? Not at all. It was even a really hard choice. I smile and sip my coffee. Choices are a thing. Making them requires considering them. Hard choices sometimes result in some uncomfortable thinking, reconsideration, and doubt. Uncomfortable thoughts don’t have any special powers – they do tell me that some particular thing matters greatly – and that’s worth knowing. 🙂

I give myself over to my thoughts for a moment, and consider that my 55th birthday apparently really matters to me, myself. I wonder quietly what I might want to actually do about that? lol

I finish my coffee and pull myself back into this present moment, facing this imminent upcoming weekend; there are things to get done to make the house ready, and to be ready, myself. It’s time to get started on all that. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, loneliness, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Outcomes

May 13, 2018 //
0

Every choice we make has a result. An outcome. A consequence. The things we seek in life come at a cost, even when the cost is “only” time.

I am drinking a lot of water today. Tap water. Canned scented fizzy water. Iced tea. It is a warm day, and staying hydrated makes sense as basic good self-care. I definitely don’t want to let myself become “dried out” on a warm summery day immediately after getting tattooed; it’s not ideal for healing skin to become dehydrated.

I’ve spent much of the day, rather unexpectedly, sleeping. Sure, last night was a late night (for me), and I didn’t get to bed until sometime shortly past 2 am, but today is Sunday and I could sleep as long as I needed to… and somehow still woke up at 6:30 am. I went back to bed. Got up at 8:30. By 10:30 I was feeling like I could nap… and I “laid down for a minute”, which resulted in waking up sometime past noon. So the day has gone. Between naps, I have meditated. Showered. Tended the container garden on my patio. Done dishes. Read. It’s been a full day, and I am content, but there is nothing to argue with when I say I have spent most of the day napping. lol

The tattoo is gorgeous, although not yet finished. I feel more me, when I see it in my reflection. It builds on a much older tattoo, adding context, size, and a suggestion of greater-than-obvious depth of meaning. The colors are vibrant. The work is a collaboration of visions; mine, and that of the tattoo artist doing the work. There are unexpected moments of discovery for me, as I examine the color work more closely over time. Here, too, self-care matters (for all I know, I’m sleeping so much today because my body wants that for healing time after being tattooed for more than 4 hours). Drinking more water, getting more rest – those are only part of the basic self-care involved in this tattoo being gorgeous a really long time. I keep it clean, cool the modest amount of inflammation with ice packs now and then, and keep it moistened gently (and hygienically). I never ever touch it with unwashed hands while it is healing. I keep it covered from the sun. Small things that all matter. My shoulder is a bit stiff from the small amount of inflammation caused by being artistically “attacked” with a tiny needle for hours, and that’s to be expected. The surface of my skin stings a bit, but mostly only immediately after I’ve cleaned it and re-moisturized; like any abrasion sort of injury, it doesn’t like being touched. The price I pay for this beautiful art is a small amount of discomfort, and some time spent caring for it. (And money; an artist’s time is worth paying for!) Seems worth it.

Hilariously, the big driver of getting this particular work done was primarily to balance the considerably larger tattoo on the other shoulder. Fail sauce is liberally poured over that notion at this point, as the new work is quite a bit larger than the piece I sought to balance. LOL I’m not even bothered by that; I already know what is needed to make that right. (Yes, for me, the balance and hint at symmetry do matter. 🙂 Other things may matter to you.) 😀 The other reason to get this tattoo is simply the experience of being tattooed, which I have notice tends to provide me with some fairly profound pain relief for a couple days – no Rx required. 🙂 Feels good, today, to feel good.

The day has been entirely spent on self-care. I notice at some point it is also Mother’s Day. If you’re a mother, well happy day to you, then. 🙂 I’m not, and the awareness of the day comes and goes.

I notice I am already feeling rather inclined to nap, again, but it is past 7 pm, and tomorrow is a work day. I make the necessary mental adjustment in my approach, and hold onto the awareness that what is needful, now, is to stay up until it is properly bedtime, based on my own needs, and then call it a night at that time, to get the best shot at a good night’s sleep before work. My sleep has been disturbed since the last party weekend down south. I yawn and laugh at myself – it’s only taken a week, but it looks like I’ll be back on track tonight… unless of course, I wake up at 2 am. LOL

I see the new ink reflected back at me in a mirror, coming back from getting yet another delicious cold water-y beverage. Grapefruit scented fizzy water tastes very much like summer, somehow. It’s gone quickly. The tattoo, of course, is still there. It reminds me of new beginnings, and longer journeys. It reminds me that beginning again is largely a matter of will (my own) and choice – and there are verbs involved. It reminds me that the journey itself is the destination.

I smile contentedly, unconcerned with whether this post is sufficiently meaningful, insightful, or “worthy” by any measure but my own. The evening sun through the window warms me gently. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin again. There is time tonight to take care of me. 🙂

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Categories art and the artist, Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5, Words

Worth Working Towards

May 6, 2018 //
0

I can see, beyond my studio window, the thunderstorm I drove through earlier today. The same one that I lay awake listening to, smiling, as it rolled through a town further south, sometime around 3 a.m. … I hadn’t been sleeping, just laying quietly, resting in the darkness, smiling, and letting random memories live again, for just a moment. It was a busy, adventurous weekend, and wrapping up the whirlwind of activity, connection, and fun on a quiet restful sort of moment was a lovely way handle things. I certainly needed to rest. I’m still… so tired. 🙂

This weekend was not, in any reasonable fashion, as I’d planned it. I’m okay with that. I had to be quite spontaneous, for days and days, and while that presents me with some challenges, I also got the quiet time to reflect and process things, which I need in order to manage it. I’d still rather have executed to skillful plan… lol I’m still myself. I wouldn’t have swapped one moment of this adventurous weekend for any other; where it wasn’t entirely delightful, it was at least educational, and often humorous. I have grown. 🙂

A memory. A moment. A flower.

8 years with my Traveling Partner, now thoroughly celebrated, cherished, savored, and acknowledged with shared joy and love. That, at least, was wonderfully well done in every possible respect. I still feel wrapped in love, as I sit here sipping water, rehydrating, and contemplating next steps for the day, and how best to get the new week started. I’m so tired. lol I could quite happily just go right the fuck to bed, right now, at 2:54 in the afternoon, and figure as long as my alarm was set for tomorrow morning, all is well. I just don’t have to force myself to work harder, right now.

There is value – so much value – in lingering over pleasant experiences.

There is a dog barking. I only sort of notice it today, and it is less than typically annoying. The breeze picks up, and the leaves seem suddenly a stranger brighter green against the storm-cloud backdrop of imminent rain. The hallway is obstructed with partially unpacked weekend details. I stalled between inspecting, repacking and putting away all the actual camping gear, and unpacking and putting away everything else; I’d gone away this weekend prepared to paint, prepared for evenings out (one never knows what the occasion may require…), prepared to camp – or not camp, prepared to read awhile, prepared to take photographs… all of which have their own “gear” requirements. I really only put away the camping stuff. There’s… so much more. My aching feet, my bad ankle, my tired back… all say “just chill”. My headache says “drink more water”. My fatigue says “take a nap”. It’s not actually possible to do all of those things at the same time. lol The sweat that cooled me while I worked in the sun on a warm afternoon has now cooled to chill me, and I run my fingers through my hair, and realize a hot shower would feel… so nice. I breathe, relax, and finish this glass of water right here, with a promise to myself to refill it and have another, on my way to the shower.

This moment right here, so human, so entirely ordinary, and in every way unremarkable, fills my senses quite pleasantly. I feel content. I feel a soft surprise to realize how unremarkable it has become to feel contentment, and sit with the moment awhile, listening to the breeze rustle the leaves beyond the deck, and feeling the sweat cool on my skin. Is this happiness? I’m not sure. I’m not even sure it matters; it’s enough.

I smile when my mind responds “this too shall pass”. Yes, yes, of course, it likely will. It is the way of things. All things. That’s okay. I can begin again, any time.

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, Healthy Living, inspiration, Logic & Reason, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, The Art of Being, The Big 5
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