This week has been peculiarly difficult in spots, amazing in others; the challenges seem to outweigh the benefits just at the moment, but that may be a byproduct of whatever new Hormone Hell I am enduring, or simple lack of sleep. My sleep has been disturbed for a couple of days now, and last night I was wakeful until after 3:00 am, the last time I checked the clock, and I needed every moment; the alarm at 5:00 am sounded actually annoyed with me for not being able to wake to shut it off sooner than a dozen or so beeps into the morning. I’m tired. I’m emotional. I’m saying good-bye to my traveling partner, and feeling my own feelings, having my own experience, facing my own challenges; this time around it’s too much, I guess. I am alone, for the moment, weeping quietly as I write.

What’s with the emotional intensity? Why is my emotional experience so uncomfortable for others? Why is theirs so uncomfortable for me? My brain and my heart and the things that I feel don’t ‘feel age’…but my body is sure taking a beating with the whole ‘aging process’ and I find myself resenting the hell out of it, wondering where it leads, struggling to find balance and meet needs. Struggling to feel valued, desirable, meaningful. This morning is an emotionally difficult one. I’m fucking exhausted, and the last shreds of functional intelligence know it, but I’m so tired I also have obviously impaired executive function, and my emotional volatility is through the roof. Hell, I don’t want to be around me right now, why would my good-hearted loves want to endure it if they can walk on?

Looking up as a positive metaphor, although beauty needs no justification.

I’m doing my best. Pausing for cleansing breaths, meditating, doing my best to be compassionate with myself…but fuck, all this hurts so much right at the moment.  This week has been too much for me…and not the too much of terrible experiences or trauma, most of the week has been filled with amazing highs, achievements, connected conversation, delightful moments… The number of minutes in any given day is the same. This week has been crammed with experiences and emotions, from my amazing solo weekend – that I’ve yet to have a few minutes to really process – to the joy of the travelers coming home, changed by their own experiences. There has barely been time to share any of that, because it is also one of the busiest professional weeks I’ve ever had, filled with long hours, new software, and new knowledge.  I’d be in better shape this morning if I’d been able to sleep last night, I’m sure.

Practices require practicing

So now what? My coffee has gone cold. My heart feels heavy. Tears just keep streaming down my cheeks… I have to go to work soon. I am alone when I want so much to be in the arms of my traveling partner. My feeling of connection and intimacy and warmth feels sheared off, as if too much happiness just won’t do, and must be cut away before I get too comfortable with it. My experience of self, itself, feels painful. I just don’t know why.  I have trouble accepting that ‘too tired’ could be reason enough, and that ‘too tired’ plus ‘hormones’ is more than reason enough, and that ‘enough’ is a good place to find balance, and stillness, and accept that this what it is, and just be. I want to feel loved, but even in my own heart I feel myself recoil from me, even as I see that desire to recoil from me reflected in my partner’s eyes. This shit sucks.

There are choices, changing those changes everything…how to choose the better choice is a question.

Our mortal lives are so finite, so brief…it is pure raw unfairness that even one moment would ever feel like this; love exists, I still know that. I wish I didn’t feel so completely cut off from feeling that experience. Like it or not, eventually we all face the evening light.

Feeling very mortal indeed, this morning.

Today is just one day. Today will teach me something about being the woman I most want to be. Today will be one of many in the rear view mirror all too soon, and it’s part of a bigger picture of precious minutes that cannot be repeated. Today is most especially a good day to change the world.