I’m awake, though I don’t mean to be. It’s quite late and the house is quiet. My Traveling Partner sleeps. The only sounds I hear are the 3D printers “singing” their happy songs in another room. The sound of the printers printing is a sound I find joyful, and it does not disturb me.
He gave me the moon and the stars.
I look around me in the dim twilight of this room, softly illuminated by various paintings and objects that glow in the dark. I feel very loved; my partner made many of these things for me. They calm me when I wake, alarmed, during the night.
I sit quietly in the dark, smiling. I won’t be awake long. I think happy thoughts of the day feeling wrapped in love.
Love everywhere.
It was a lovely day. I smile recalling the new spice racks my Traveling Partner made and installed for me. I think about love. I think about his eyes and his smile and his rude jokes. I think about his strong arms around me and the way he loves me.
The quiet persists and I am ready to sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough to begin again.
We’re more divided than ever. More diverse in the specificity of our intersecting identities. More willing than ever to set boundaries and make it a fight. We do more out grouping, in spite of being more aware that out grouping is a thing – and that it causes harm. We’re very inefficient creatures as far as making social progress that benefits us all, are we not?
So… What do you really stand for? Whose side are you really on? In life? In love? When you “take a side”, are your eyes on a shared win for humanity – or are you hoping to “win an argument”, based on individual values, special interests, or some particular selected weird bit of dogma that you’ve become fixated on, or perhaps adopted when you were so young you mistake it for “natural law”? I mean, we’re all human, our biases are very real, and our cognition has legitimate limitations and… quirks. We aren’t even all reliably decent people (still people, though). It’s not just about global conflict – it gets right down to individual relationships. We’re human.
…What do human beings mean when we say “equal”, or “fair”, or “morally right”? How do we define the value of a human life – and what does it take for any one of us to turn on another human being and decide that their life lacks value? I don’t have answers to any of these questions, aside from my own answers that I trust with a certain amount of skepticism (being wholly aware how human I am, and how prone to error). I do think these are questions we should be asking, and discussing in an honest and vulnerable way, open to changing our thinking for the betterment of human kind. For the betterment of the planet, and of life itself. Yeah, and as individuals, too.
I was reading an article recently, about healthy relationships (I have to work at mine, in spite of our deep love for each other; love doesn’t come naturally to me, I think). The article identifies some things that I hadn’t thought about in quite the way they suggest – I won’t break it all down, because you’ll no doubt have your own thoughts, but these things seem worth considering necessary in a healthy relationship – and I suspect this applies to how we relate to “people” more broadly, too:
You’re actively interested in each other’s lives.
You’re aware of your “attachment style” – and what other attachment styles exist, and how those function – and you’re working to develop a healthier attachment style, yourself.
You don’t avoid conflict, but you don’t “fight” – you work as a team to solve problems, and achieve suitable compromise when necessary.
When you address conflict, you’re open to discussing, facing, and resolving big fears and issues, not just small ones.
You support each other without scorekeeping.
You have your own identity and understand that other’s do, too.
You create emotional safe space for each other and hold space for growth and change over time.
Incomplete work-in-progress. “Toxicity”, 11″x14″ acrylic mixed-media on canvas
Hmm. I sit with my afternoon tea and a half-finished painting in progress (a mixed-media trauma portrait), long overdue to be completed. It’s been holding me back now for… almost 8 years. Has it been so long? Wow. Too long to let pain fester. She smirks back me as I work, but her gaze is less commanding as I work out my hurt, my anger, my aggression, my doubt, my sorrow… a brush stroke here, a small bit of story-telling debris inserted into gel medium over there, another touch of glow… I smile to myself. This feels good. I don’t have words for this – but I have paint and canvas, and time to begin again.
I sip my tea and reflect. I watch the paint dry and consider the next step – like spell-casting or prayer, this is heart-felt work, and my heart feels it. I feel heard. I feel inspired.
…I’m out of small canvases. LOL
I think about my most important relationships over the years, and how I fit into those. Where I got something right. Where I clearly got it wrong. Where my nature and my character put things right… where they contributed to how wrong things were. Where wanting things to be “easy” made it so much harder to build a healthy relationship. Where my chaos and damage broke things down. Where it wasn’t that at all, but I still got it so very wrong. It’s a lot to take in, but… isn’t love worth the work?
I don’t need to take sides, I’m not arguing. I sip my tea, breathe, and begin again.
I woke early. It’s a Sunday. I had hoped to sleep in, but it’s not that day, not that experience.
I somehow managed to “psychically wake up” my Traveling Partner although I was sleeping in another room. (I honestly just don’t know how I woke him, but he turned up to tell me that I had done so within seconds of me sitting up to acknowledge a new day. “Psychically” covers it as well as anything else for now.) I dress and head out for a walk, hoping he can get some more rest. I choose a favorite trail that’s a bit of a drive to get to; it prolongs my time out of the house.
… It’s a lovely misty morning for a quiet marshside walk. I get back to the car too early to head straight home; if my partner is sleeping, I want to be sure he gets more than an hour of napping! Good time to jot down a few words.
An Autumn Sunday
My plan is to return home, make coffee, and spend the day creatively (and doing laundry, and tackling some outside chores that should not take long). I’m specifically so very hungry to be painting, and shit just keeps getting in the way. Some days it just feels like “everyone wants a piece of me” and there’s nothing left for me at the end of the day… Or week. Routine chores and practical shit that just has to get done uses up most of my time and attention, leaving me too tired physically to then also paint. Time taken in the studio often feels like time taken away from my partner. I could do better. I need to do better. Painting is, for me, both a form of communication and a form of self-care and I am failing myself on this pretty seriously.
I sit with my thoughts and half an eye on the clock.
What an emotionally difficult weekend this has been. I meant to spend most of it painting and loving my partner. I managed to fail on both of those intentions pretty notably. Tears well up when I acknowledge that for myself, but they don’t fall. I take a deep breath and exhale. Another chance to begin again. G’damn we said some pretty awful things to each other. That saddens me. I know I can do better.
So, it’s another day, another chance to be the woman I most want to be, another opportunity to choose my adventure and walk my own path. Adulting is hard, but I know what I want out of my day, even if I am not entirely sure which verbs are most likely to get that result.
I’m sipping an iced cold brew coffee, and nibbling a breakfast sandwich from the local baker on a foggy Autumn morning. The sounds of the city seemed muffled as I crossed the park from my parked car to the office. The fog wraps the high-rise condos and office buildings in a peculiar disappearing act, and as they rise into the fog they disappear, with only a few lights still twinkling through the mist. The ice in my coffee clinks when I lift the cup and the coffee is bitter and icy, each sip simultaneously refreshing and just a bit perplexing; I am used to drinking hot coffee in the morning, and I have no idea why the change this morning (I just “went with it”). The sandwich is savory, well-made of fresh bread and warm, freshly scrambled eggs. The crunch of the toasted bread is a nice complement to the warmth and softness of the eggs. The hint of salty flavor from the olive tapenade used as a condiment delights me. It’s a very pleasant morning, and it lets me forget for awhile what a fucking trainwreck the world seems to be right now.
…Will humanity even survive itself?…
I smile quietly to myself, feeling incredibly grateful to have a Traveling Partner who understands enough of my trauma history to “get” why it’s a terrible idea for me to read the news (or get tempted into doomscrolling a news feed). He filters the news for me very considerately, finding reliable sources that are very factual and less inclined toward click-bait or emotional provocation, and does a lot to keep “war porn” away from my eyes (and consciousness). I don’t do well if I get mired in despair over faraway battlefields I can’t do anything about, but would still obsess over. I have looked directly into the eyes of War and I have seen too much, too clearly. I have ties to people and places that seem chronically in conflict. I just… can’t. I care too much, and have little influence or power to make real change. All I can do is raise my voice (and vote, with my ballot and my money) and do my own best not to be part of the problem. I send heartfelt kisses his way and hope that he is sleeping deeply and dreaming of wonderful things.
A murder of crows flies past the window and settles into the trees below. Autumn. The sky is beginning to lighten with the arrival of the new day, but it’s a gray and featureless sky this morning, and not very exciting. I still find myself inspired by the fog, the city lights, the towering high-rise condos reaching into the mist… the artist within looks over the analyst’s shoulders; I should paint this weekend. 🙂
I’ve started reading Lord of the Rings. I never have. I once started The Hobbit, but I struggled so much with the author’s writing style I just set it aside and never went back. I’m just a bit embarrassed by that, but… Proust is also waiting for my attention. I’ll get there. lol So far I’m well-into the first book of the trilogy, and enjoying it quite a lot. I smile a silent thank you to my partner again; his fondness for these books is certainly a large part of why I decided to give it another try.
…So… A misty Autumn morning and a new day unfolding ahead of me. Somehow it’s already time to begin again. 🙂
I woke to my silent alarm, but only once the lights were at full brightness. I got up, dressed quietly and managed to leave the house without making any loud or abrupt noises, hoping my Traveling Partner slept through my departure. He needs the sleep after a restless night, I know.
Morning mist, early walk.
I enjoyed a nice walk along a partially lit trail which meanders through oak groves and vineyards, returning to the car before ever hearing from my partner that he has started his day. I stretch and do some yoga. I take time to meditate. I double check that I am on time with my morning meds.
I look at the time and make a note that I will need to return home by 09:00, regardless, to begin the workday, but I still had some time… So, I decided to write a bit. I chuckle to myself; it would be easier on my laptop, which is specifically portable for exactly this sort of thing. lol I should perhaps begin bringing it along in the morning…
… So far a pleasant morning. I slept okay, aside from being confronted crossly by my partner when he found himself wakeful, struggling to breathe comfortably, and wondering what was up with me, and whether I might be the cause of his discomfort. I eventually got back to sleep. I was also awake, having been awakened when my mask seal broke (I probably turned over awkwardly) and needed to remove and reposition it. Correlation is not causation, but perhaps my sudden movement to remove my mask woke him? Or the sound of air leaking past my cheek? I don’t know. Well. Shit. At least it’s not my snoring keeping him from sleeping.
I keep my eye on the time, hoping that he wakes up before I come home; I just don’t want to be the thing that wakes him up, this morning. I’m in quite a bit of pain, and a little grumpy myself as a result, and I know how cranky he can be when he doesn’t sleep well. I don’t feel like dealing with any of that, just want to get on with the day gently and enjoy a good cup of coffee with my Traveling Partner before work…
… Or just work, if he’s not in that place himself…
Sometimes adulting is hard, and inconvenient. Sometimes I’ve just got to begin again and do my best to do better. 🙂
Evening Light 