…You know how hard it can be…”  Thanks, John.

This morning sucks more than a little bit. Well, for the moment. It’s nice to have a steady reliable understanding these days that moments are just that – momentary. Thank you, Mr-Therapist, Sir, and thank you Jon Kabat-Zinn, Andy Puddicombe, Russ Harris, Brene Brown and Timber Hawkeye. Thank you thousands of years of meditation, decades of hippies, and one loving partner with more willingness to try than seems human.

This morning still sucks. Welcome to Hormone Hell. Fuck I want to be done with this! I’m tired of feeling frustrated by,  and ashamed of, being female because men who matter to me have their own struggles and challenges with what it is to live with and love women. Thanks, Dad, I definitely owe you one there.

I’m doing my best to ride the wave, allow myself room for my emotions (frustration, hurt, anger, resentment, and just enough yearning for intimacy and closeness to set my teeth on edge because it isn’t easy).  A few good deep breaths sounds easier than it feels. My chest feels tight, and the tears waiting to fall are making me angry – it still feels like a weakness to cry ‘for no reason’. It’s hard to allow myself the self-compassion to understand that ‘reason’ isn’t what drives tears.

My coffee is growing cold. With an interesting measure of spitefulness directed inward, I punish myself by petulantly allowing it, observing that choice with a measure of wonder, and some tiny bit of humor lurking in the background, because it is an empty gesture affecting no one but me.

This is about as close as I get to a good solid rant these days. lol. The breathing thing, as simple as that seems, really helps and just a bit less than 300 words later, I find myself growing calm again. No tantrum today, just some lingering sadness. i feel vaguely as if I am ‘just not what he’s looking for’. What an incredibly ugly feeling to have about someone who loves me so much. This is a morning when I would very much like to tell being female to fuck right off.

I woke in a pretty good mood. I’m regularly frustrated and challenged by how volatile my mood can be. That volatility, at other points in my life, has resulted in some incredibly poor decision-making, and real desperation to find balance and peace, decades of wasted time in therapy that wasn’t effective, years spent on medications of one sort of another intended to ameliorate some particular symptom, even hardcore psych meds – all because hormones on top of PTSD added to a TBI is a difficult experience to manage.  Hell, I’ve had PMS so severe that I was actually a threat to people living with me, other times so severe I actually felt suicidal.  That’s not okay. I sit here trying to make sense of that and I feel my feminist rage rise up inside myself – what about me, Medical Science? I want to make someone listen! Why don’t we matter more?  You’d think as popular for relationships as women are, that someone would give a shit about helping us be well and whole and comfortable in and with our experience as beings. It’s disappointing to me that I’m 50 and there’s still no real progress to speak of in understanding or improving women’s experience of themselves as sexual hormonal beings, or improving our place in the world.

Oh, hey, there’s that rant. I guess I’ve still got it in me. Push the right lever, a pellet pops out. God damn it.

I’m still a student of life, of love, of the world… and it is making a difference in my experience, every day.  Over months it has grown difficult to be provoked to aggression or confrontation, and I rarely trap myself in always/never thinking, or spiraling internal arguments where my hurt feeds the fallacy, which drives the hurt.  It is a pleasant change, and a morning like this affords me a good opportunity to see the changes within.  So, okay, in the process I am human.  I am human.

So are my lovers, and they can only take what they can take.  That seems not only obvious, but reasonable. I’m still sad to be alone right now, and that will pass.  I often choose solitude over difficult interactions, myself, and I understand walking away from tension.  Love is strange stuff.  I take care of me with deep calming breaths, with a few thoughtful words, some mindful observations, and gentle reality checks.  Before more than a few minutes pass, my heart is serene, and my compassion is for my lover.  I still feel a current of sadness tugging at my heart, but now it is for the price he pays, as much as for my own challenges and regrets.  It isn’t easy. Love is so worth all of it – but it isn’t easy.  We choose love.  It isn’t a choice we only make once.  That is the nature of commitment, not simply that it isn’t a one-time choice, but that it is worth choosing again and again.

That latte is definitely cold now. That’s okay.  It’s a small price to find that still calm place in my heart.

Today is a whole new experience. I hope I choose wisely. Today I am kind. Today I love well, and with my whole heart. Today I am compassionate.  Today I will change the world… or…at least my morning. 😀

I have come so far from this place.