I woke to the overhead light above the bed shining in my eyes. My “alarm” went off without waking me, the lights reaching full brightness before I finally woke. This is rare for me. I shook off my grogginess, literally shaking my head, then shimmying my shoulders, trying to shake off the last remaining sleepiness. I dressed and headed for the door. My Traveling Partner was already awake, already drinking coffeee. We exchanged pleasant words, and I kissed him before leaving the house to head up the road to the more distant co-work space. It’ll be more suited to the meetings I’ve got today, and I’m grateful to have the option.
The morning is a mild one, damp with recent rain, and chilly but not cold. The sky is cloudy, with stars peaking through in places. No sign of the northern lights this morning, but I do look. Ordinary enough, and an unremarkable beginning to a new day.
I turn onto the highway, and find myself in thick fog. Visibility is obscured such that even the big pick-ups with fancy extra lights at full brightness are not revealed in the oncoming lane until they are about 50 feet away. Fairly hazardous driving conditions, and I make a point to drive safely, and at a reasonable speed for conditions. Somehow, I still manage to find myself ahead of all the traffic, out in the foggy darkness. The world looked surreal, unformed, and ready to be created by pure will and imagination. I entertained myself with fanciful notions of “making the world”, as I drove through the fog and the darkness.
…So much is obscured by the fog…
I get to the office, get set up and settled in, and the day begins. I sigh to myself. This feels comfortable. I like things routine and familiar. I like things easy. I don’t think these preferences are unusual, but I have also learned that although I am not alone in having these preferences, they are not at all “the only way”. Embracing change has done a lot to free me from the terror (no fooling), anxiety, and stress of enduring other people’s choices, preferences, and chosen paths. One example? I like to get moved into a place, figure out where things go, and then fucking leave them there… for years. I don’t have a personal need to rotate the displayed art, or move the furniture around based on the circumstances, or change how the kitchen is organized. If there’s no clear and obvious need to make a change in my surroundings… I don’t.
I like having a clear mental map of my living space. I like being able to navigate in the dark during the night without stubbing a toe, or banging a shin, on some object I didn’t expect to be where it was. I am adaptable enough – I can get used to such changes with relative ease, and I try not to bitch about changes that really don’t matter. I’m not actually particularly spontaneous or interested in purposefully making changes for the sake of novelty or “just because”… But some people are. Even some people dear to me. We’re each having our own experience. We’re each walking our own path. My household may not be a democracy – but it’s also not an autocracy or a dictatorship. It’s more a… merry band of chaotic anarchists trying to avoid violating personal boundaries and doing what we can to live together harmoniously, with occasional outbreaks of “my house/my way” occuring on occasions of frayed nerves or in stressful times. I mean… that’s my perspective on it. My Traveling Partner and the Anxious Adventurer likely have their own perspective, and surely have their own experience. We’re all doing our best, and trying not to be dicks to each other.
I don’t like change. Yep. I’m one of those people. On the other hand, I recognize that change is. Change doesn’t give a fuck about whether I like it or not. My Traveling Partner has learned to be kind and considerate and to discuss his ideas for switching things up in shared space before acting on them. (I’m pretty sure he’d happily rearrange all the furniture in the house some afternoons just to see how something might look, on a whim, multiple times in a given year, were it not that he truly cares about my mental health.) I’ve learned to be open to discussing how things could be different or better with some change, and to be open to trying things out. It’s been healthy for me, although sometimes stressful. When my beloved got hurt, and change was necessary to accommodate his needs, I made a point to remain open, to adapt, to keep my stress to myself long enough to allow change to have its way with me in the moment, and to accept that change was helpful and necessary. None of that is to say it was easy. There were verbs involved. I had to work at it. I sometimes cried privately over silly things that stressed me out and were of no real consequence. I also survived all of it quite easily. There was a lot to learn there for me. I’m still processing some of it, and now that my beloved is back on his feet, and beginning to make the kind of progress that puts him back to work in the shop, happily puttering and doing projects, and beginning to return to some kind of normal… there is more change. More opportunity to be open. More practicing required to manage my stress and anxiety.
It was this morning that I realized that some of my anxiety is due to my Traveling Partner’s increasingly rapid improvements, and the return of more and more of his capabilities. I’m relieved, yes, definitely. I’m grateful and encouraged. I’m delighted. I’m proud of him. I’m also having to deal with the anxiety that I experience in the face of specific kinds of change. He’s now able to reconsider some of the accommodations we’d made when he was most disabled… and to consider others that would be better for him now. He’s also able to just go ahead and do most of it himself, and some of my anxiety is part of letting go of more and more of the caregiving. I don’t get why that would cause me stress, but there it is; some of my anxiety is coming from this gradual resetting (again) of shared expectations of ability, capability, and limitations. New boundaries. New needs. Differences. I feel unsettled in spite of how much I wanted to see this day come.
Human primates are weird.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a new day. It’s a new beginning. We’re each having our own experience. We’re each walking our own path. Some people like to step on all the cracks on a sidewalk, other people hop over them, still others think any such foolishness is unnecessary and a waste of time. Humans being human. I smile to myself, grateful to see my beloved making progress. I set down some of my baggage, and feel lighter for having done so. It’s time to begin again.
Evening Light 