My week started out pretty rough. My sleep health wasn’t good. Nightmares (again), and disturbed rest. Flare ups of emotional volatility, partially due to the poor sleep, partially due to “whatever” was driving that. I mean, I’m not unfamiliar with my own issues, I know what’s up. Political and legislative attacks on women’s health care options. Political shenanigans (seriously??) regarding basic good sense medical care during a pandemic (the heights of ignorance are astonishing). I’ll admit I’m offended that medicine, medical care, or the healthcare system are politicized in the way that they are. (Although, just being real here, I’m also offended that those are “for profit” industries, too.) Then, on top of the stressors this background crap presents, we’ve got people objecting to ending our endless war in Afhganistan. What the fuck?? I get it, it’s hard watching those media images of terrified people trying to get out of their country – away from war – against limited time, and limited transportation resources. My PTSD flared up hard. Rough. I don’t really want or need to deep dive the details; ruminating on the start of a downward spiral is not especially helpful (for me, now).
I’m okay right now. Yesterday was pleasant, too, and Thursday was better than Tuesday, so… “nothing to see here”. 🙂
The “downward spiral” of a flare-up of a mental health condition isn’t new for folks who deal with it. It’s frustrating. Terrifying. Causes a deep sense of futility and despair. All the work to heal… all the therapy… the expense… the effort… and then… still human. Still capable of suffering. Still wounded. Still struggling. It’s hard. It’s also super real. Are you in it? Sliding down? Scrambling for any possible hand-hold to slow the progression downward? I feel that. I see you.
This time was better, for me. I didn’t slide as far as fast. I didn’t get mired in my own bullshit, blinded and deafened to anything else. I was able to ask for – and accept – help. I was more clear, with my words, about what I was going through, and be more open. I was able to stall the slide – which still kind of wows me, sitting here this morning, with my coffee and my contentment. I’m pleased to acknowledge the very real progress I’ve made that I could not see, sense, or appreciate on Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Monday? Earlier this week. 🙂
My Traveling Partner was taken by surprise by my flare up. He was a support super star, after the initial chaos rocked him off center. I not only stayed open to being supported – which was hard for me – he also stayed committed to supporting me. I know that couldn’t be easy. Apologies were exchanged, where appropriate, and the love we wrapped each other in was authentic, and deep and abiding.
I guess I’m just saying… don’t just give in to the slide down. Breathe. Take a nap. Drink enough water. Handle your self-care. Walk in the sun. Take a day off work. Get some exercise. Let it pass – it will, eventually, but let that happen. Don’t hang on to the pain and the chaos. Distract yourself from your ancient pain, don’t just sit there picking at the scabs. I mean… I’m no expert, I’m just saying, you have options. 🙂
You’re stronger than you know. You’ve been through a lot. You’ve got this. Begin again. ❤
Happy Monday, y’all. It’s been hours since my morning coffee, and the afternoon is heating up quickly. I’ve got my bottle of cold water at my desk, and a covered mug of hot noodles for a quick lunch. My Traveling Partner is in his shop, doing shop things. I’m staring into an abyss of spreadsheets and a to-do list that is frankly embarrassing in length. I take a long drink of water and remind myself it is a job, and I’m being paid to do it. This time is not my own (well, I mean, right now is my lunch break, so… that’s mine).
I breathe deeply. My exhale becomes a heavy sigh. I’m mostly fine. I’m just sort of cross. This has, so far, been one of those days that seems as if every attempt I make at affection, appreciation, positive connection… any bid at all really, directed to my partner is met with… a surly, rather terse, somewhat parental tone. I’m annoyed with that. It’s not at all where my own head is at. I’m finding, as a result, that I’m just irked with the whole fucking day I find myself wrapped in. I’m okay with saying I’m annoyed by it. Real enough. What to do about it is another matter. So far, continued attempts are not being met well, so I’ve sort of given up on it for the time being. I’m in “task processing mode”, focused on practical matters and getting shit done, one step at a time, without becoming emotionally invested at all. Considering how much I enjoy my partner’s appreciation, affection, and approval, it’s sometimes very tough to let it go and hold on to the awareness that we’re each having our own experience.
Honestly, we’re a hilarious partnership. We adore each other, and generally manage the day-to-day with humor and delighted affection for each other. Sometimes it’s not that easy, and my brain injury definitely gets in the way of things now and then. I try to be patient with myself, even when he’s having trouble being patient with me, himself. I work hard on not taking his impatience with me at all personally; I know that it is not. I can be surprisingly clumsy sometimes, or awkward, or hapless, or somehow offset from his understanding of whatever the hell is going on at the moment. We are each having our own experience, that’s unavoidable. We are not one being, one mind. We’re two entirely separate human primates, making a go of life together. 🙂 A shared journey, not an identical one.
I give my noodles a chance to cool a bit. I don’t really feel up to adding a burned mouth to my list of bullshit to deal with today. lol I have choices. I can change my experience – and change my perspective on it (I was pretty irritable and on the edge of tears when I started this, now I’m just hungry*. lol). Resilience doesn’t seem to be about never reacting, or avoiding the occasional bad mood, so much as being about shortening that period of time between when a feeling or experience develops, and when I’ve gained useful perspective on it. It’s enough to be able to make that journey. I sometimes even feel that I’m getting pretty good at doing it with a measure of skill. 🙂
…I sure know how to begin again… 😀
*By the time I finished writing through my lunch break, and having a bit of a pleasant chat with my partner about shop-related matters, and connecting in a loving way, I was once again in a comfortable place emotionally. Feels good. Didn’t honestly take that long to get from “there” to here, and the lack of residual negative emotion clogging up my experience of self (and this Monday) speaks volumes for how far I’ve really come since 2013. I’m sometimes pretty blown away when I reflect on the likelihood that a bit of emotional weather of this sort could have been days or weeks worth of feelings of despair, futility, and irritation. That’s a long way from where I am now. 🙂 Worth celebrating. I slurp my noodles contentedly. This works.
Is the dim light of dawn, before sunrise, “too early” to go for a walk? Does coffee actually “taste good” at all? Is a desktop 3D printer “worth the money”? Am I “beautiful”? Am I “fat”? Am I “stupid”? Is that remark on the tip of my tongue “in good taste” or “hurtful”? Is that bag of groceries “too expensive”?
…Is this a moment I can afford to waste on trivia?…
It’s a matter of perspective in every case, and for each question that I’ve listed so far, isn’t it? Is there a single objective truth answering any one of these questions? I don’t think there really is. Perspective is a tricky piece of adulting. We seem to develop perspective over time, and if we’re fortunate we begin from a helpful place with parents, educators, and elders, leading us through learning, with great care to “stay real”. Doesn’t happen for everyone (that’s pretty “real” all by itself), and certainly a great many human primates reach adulthood either lacking any sense of perspective, or mired in weird distortions created by emotional chaos, thinking errors, and misinformation. Perspective is a big deal.
The dim light of dawn, before sunrise, is “too early” to go for a walk, if the path will be treacherous, slippery, or known to be the active hunting territory of a cougar. Certainly there’d be better times to walk such a trail. On the other hand, given a level paved suburban “trail” through a safely lit park, in the company of a friend, maybe not so hazardous after all?
Which one is this?
Coffee only “tastes good” to those who have a taste for it. Just saying; if you don’t like coffee, no, it doesn’t “taste good” at all. Hell, I enjoy a good cup of coffee – and I not-uncommonly quaff a cup that is… just not good. So… yeah. Perspective weighs in, again.
I suppose, with things like “affordability”, the questions are very relative. A desktop 3D printer is probably super affordable given adequate income, bills all paid, surplus resources, or a likelihood that it may itself become a source of revenue. It wouldn’t be “worth the money” if viewed as an entertaining toy coming out of a limited budget that would result in not paying the bills, or not being able to buy groceries, or fill a prescription for life-sustaining medication. There’s definitely more to “affordability” than the price tag of an item.
Beauty, and the evaluation of beauty, is so incredibly subjective and individual. Am I beautiful? I sometimes think so. Sometimes other people say so. My mirror doesn’t lie to me, though, and I am an entirely ordinary-looking middle-aged woman. What is “beauty”? If it is a feeling and sense of self, I could easily call myself beautiful and feel that I truthfully am, most days. If it is a practical matter of size, shape, symmetry, and fashionable aesthetic? I’m most likely not even “pretty”, “cute”, or “attractive”, to most people. I’m just a 58-year-old woman with a few extra pounds. I’m sufficiently comfortable with who I am and how I look that I don’t make any practical effort to change it with cosmetics, and that works for me. I like comfortable.
The “fat” and “stupid” questions work a lot like the “beauty” question, really; they are subject not only to my own perspective, but also to the subjective perspectives of others around me. Am I fat? Well… I guess, yeah. My doctor would use medical language to say as much, and my health would benefit from losing some weight. A male friend of many years acquaintance would disagree; he likes the aesthetic, the softness, and the hug-ability of a plump woman. Is he wrong? No, just has a different perspective on the matter of weight and fitness. Similarly, if I am having a conversation on a topic I know well, with someone who knows much less about it, I may sound very smart. On the other hand, if I were to attempt to chat up a physicist by fronting and showing off how much I know about physics? I’d sound very stupid indeed, and I’d look a major fool. Very relative. Standing alone in a room considering all of what I know in the context of all there is to know, I’d hesitate to call myself “smart” – there is so much more I could learn, know, or come to understand. 🙂 I’d also hesitate to call myself “stupid” – that there is vast knowledge available, and I only know a fraction of it, is not the defining characteristic of stupidity in my dictionary. (Your results – and your dictionary – may vary.)
Is the remark on the tip of my tongue “in poor taste” or “hurtful”? God damn, it sure could be. I hope it isn’t. I’ve grown a lot over the years, and it is not my way to hurt people carelessly (or by intent, generally), or to present myself in a way that is objectionable for people to be around. I would not even be “the one” to get to decide whether a remark is in poor taste or hurtful – that would need to be decided by the recipient, or the individual I hurt by it. In that instance, it is their perspective that matters, not mine.
Groceries can be expensive. Sometimes that is a matter of perspective, sometimes it’s just a painful punchline to a joke that isn’t funny in a life full of struggle. “Can I afford groceries for my family?” is a question I hope none of us this morning has to ask. Wishful thinking. No doubt someone out there is very worried about this question, and it’s a legit source of stress and heartache. Perspective, here, is more about getting through, getting by, and for those of us not facing that specific struggle, perspective has to extend to being kind at the check out line day-to-day; we don’t know what that other person is truly going through.
It’s a strange time. The pandemic had been seeming to recede, and people got excited (and careless). In that careless excitement lurked the ongoing hazard of new variants with new characteristics, and here we all are, trying to sort out when and where masks still just make fucking sense, and whether or not it’s worth the obvious risks to socialize in groups, yet. For me, my own perspective, it seems a bit premature. I enjoyed my coastal getaway, but I still keep my mask handy. I still avoid groups and close contact with strangers. I still avoid crowds and enclosed shared spaces. I go here or there to run an errand, but attempt to minimize my direct contact with people. I work from home and feel fortunate that I can. I hang out with my Traveling Partner, so grateful to share this peculiar time with this singular individual, fortunate to live and love with a human being I value and enjoy. Feels weird to have moved to new community, but never dined out in one of the local restaurants, or set foot in the shops in the downtown area, but… would it be worth dying for? My perspective is that it can wait – living and loving matters more. So, I take care, take precautions, and stay mindful that this is not a universally shared perspective. 🙂
I stare down into my coffee cup, and then at my to-do list for today. Another Sunday. More housekeeping. Aquarium maintenance, gardening, a quick trip the hardware store… It’s time to begin again. 🙂
I’m sipping coffee and listening to videos in the background. Pleasant Sunday morning. Housekeeping on the agenda, not much else. I expect it’ll be a hot summer day. I’m okay with a couple hours of chores and a few moments for myself, and some pleasant hours with my Traveling Partner.
Our path may not always be level, the day may not always be sunny.
…Love isn’t “perfect”. Life either. Nothing really is. (Maybe this cup of coffee…) I make a lot of choices, and some of those are compromises, and some are just poor choices…on the other hand, I’ve got a lot of very cool opportunities to choose from, and fascinating people with whom I can choose to associate. Kinda neat, actually. Even our most intimate relationships are filled with choices.
We choose our path, and we choose what we consider our choices to be.
I chose my Traveling Partner a long time ago (11 years)… on a commute, I think. There was a hug involved. Hours of conversation, over time. A friendship developed. I adore this human being. He is “flawed” (inasmuch as he is quite human), as I am myself. There are days when one or the other of us seriously aggravates the other. (Just being real, and let’s be frank, one thing I know I can count on in life is that life will be, generally, quite “real”. lol) I enjoy him, as a friend, as a human being, as a partner… I smile when I think of him, and he is the person most easily able to unintentionally hurt me emotionally with a harsh word in a difficult moment. I still choose him, and yeah, even when I’m crying over a moment of hurt feelings, I still choose him.
He’s very dear to me. 😀 (bad pun intentional)
Why bring it up? It’s been a lovely weekend. This is all pretty obvious practical shit, right here, and hardly bears pointing out. Don’t we all go through it? Some moment that contrasts the wonderful qualities with the very human, sometimes much less wonderful qualities? Again – pretty real. Pretty ordinary. I dunno. I was thinking about it as I walked yesterday… “What matters most?”… “What builds a firm enduring foundation for love?”… “What does a healthy relationship look like, over time?”… “How does healthy boundary and expectation-setting look and feel in the context of a healthy adult relationship?”… “What part do I, myself, play in ensuring I am treated well based on my own understanding of “good treatment” – and how I do ensure I am skillfully, authentically, ensuring I treat my partner well based on their understanding of “good treatment” – and my own?” Big questions. (Long walk.)
Growth isn’t about what’s easy or comfortable. It’s often about hard questions, and answers that require rather a lot of real work. “Is the effort worth it?” is one question that is easy to answer, for me, in the context of this relationship: yes.
Sometimes choices seem so limited… or complicated… those perceptions are also choices.
I’ve had 3 other “long term relationships” of any notable duration. Two ran far longer than the quality of the relationship warranted. (Okay, well, all three of those, actually, were far longer than what was healthy, but I did manage to cut that last one short before my life or mental health were in complete chaos.) I’ve often been that person working at it longer/harder and loyally clinging to the carcass of a relationship that did not at all rate such a ferocious commitment in the first place. “I didn’t know better” doesn’t describe the goings on so much as “brain damage”, honestly. Yikes. That feels “too real”, right there. I sigh, finish my coffee, and let it go. 🙂 I’m rather happily in a very different place these days, different relationship altogether. “Learned my lesson”? Possibly not – more than I’ve been fortunate, and this particular relationship grew and developed largely in the context of ongoing therapy and other positive life choices (and changes) that took me down a healthier path.
Choices.
Don’t sit around miserable, is what I’m saying. You have choices. You don’t have to wait for decades of your life to slip by – you can choose change. Any time. You can begin again. Oh, I know, it’s a difficult sort of choice to make, but truly, it is yours.
Maybe what looks like a dead-end just isn’t your path at all?
This particular blog post is about several things that are more than a little interconnected, but probably also entirely coincidental, and more likely still? I may not actually ever get around to mentioning any of those details in any specific way, because I’ve got this headache “peering over my shoulder” and distracting me. I sip ginger ale in a dark room. My tinnitus is louder than my computer, and I double-check to “see that it’s on” and laugh, immediately realizing how fucking dumb that actually is; I’m at the keyboard, writing. God damn this headache makes me fucking stupid. 0_o How annoying.
I’ve been very introspective these past few days. June 25th has some gravitas these days – the anniversary of my Mother’s death. It’s also got some serious joy – the anniversary of buying our home (we did not select the date). “Mixed emotions” doesn’t even come close to explaining where this put my head these last few days, as we approach the 1st anniversary of the date we actually moved into our home. So many boxes! Last year, all of the days between those dates were midst the COVID-19 pandemic, in the early months of “the lockdown”… strange to discuss it in months, but here we all are. I write a few more grim sentences, then remember I honestly don’t know enough to legitimately have an opinion of some of these things. I delete them, and let my mind wander.
It was hot this week. Like…intensely bold-red-text-heat-warning hot. No kidding. It was… Phoenix hot. Fresno hot. Death Valley hot.
I’m not even exaggerating.
Fortunately, it cooled off quite a bit day by day. It was so hot I couldn’t think. Writing would have put more heat into my studio, so I kept it to the minimum needed to work, and then shut everything down. My Traveling Partner and I mostly sat around bitching about the heat, keeping the things as cool as we could, in darkened rooms, drinking water. Is it weird that my recollection of those hot days is pretty pleasant? I enjoyed my partner’s company when I wasn’t working, and I’ve no memory of discord or fussing at each other. We were a team fighting a common “enemy” – the heat. We were armed with ice cream and humor. LOL Much fun was had by all. I mean… that’s how I remember it.
Memory is weird. I’d link a particular song that comes to mind…but I can’t remember the title… and then, when I do, I can’t find a link to it… I’m no longer sure I’m remembering it correctly, at all.
…On the other hand…I clearly remember exactly what a summer night in Maryland smells like, how it sounds, how the humid air clings relentlessly to sweat…
Memory is weird.
…I had forgotten how much I like ginger ale…
I sit quietly awhile, just listening to my tinnitus and sipping ginger ale. I could do without the headache that persists in hanging out with me. I rub my neck and remind myself it won’t last indefinitely – what ever does?
…Wow. That went downhill fast. LOL
Roses in my garden
It’s summer, I guess, for real. Hotter summers now, that seems clear. The summers definitely were not this hot 10 years ago (and more recently than that, Portlanders could be heard making jokes about “June-uary”, because summer didn’t really arrive until July). My garden didn’t die this year, when the heat came; my Traveling Partner set up a simple drip irrigation system for me. My tomatoes did not seem to suffer with the heat at all, quite the contrary; I think we’re going to have “too many tomatoes”. LOL Win. 🙂
Evening Light 