Be the change you want to see.

One of the things that the pandemic has taken from me, is the ability to wander around my own house talking to myself, Or talking into the phone as I'm doing now. I don't feel comfortable dictating into the phone while Jeff's in the house. I mean he's got his own headphones, and he'll listen to his podcasts or watch his YouTube videos but for whatever damn reason I still don't feel comfortable. Feels like I disturb him if I'm talking in the house.

But I got really used to it, while he was still working, before he retired.

As far as the fiction writing goes, dictating words and story feels like it comes from a different part of my brain, then typing on the phone, typing on the laptop, and then a completely different head space if I go to use pen and paper and handwrite some part of the story. Similarly I can dictate blog posts like this quick and easy and I just... don't, now.

I have been missing the sound of my own voice.

I don't have regular social scheduling with people who want to hear me talk. Had a really nice dinner with girl purple and her sweetie kit, and I just got to talk about something that I'm enthusiastic about, reading Tarot. And they dug it and I really enjoyed being appreciated. I read for them, and I read for myself, and I just sort of talked about the structure of the deck and how you read how the majors are big life theme sorts of cards and the minors or pip cards are more like everyday concerns? Yeah. New deck, getting to know it is being enjoyable.

There's this acronym that fly lady uses. The word halt, stands for hungry angry lonely or tired. I think the H needs to have two meanings, hungry, and hurting. Cuz when I'm hurting it messes with my head because I feel feelings and I don't recognize that I have the body pain going on? It's not until I idly rub it something that's painful and resolve things the next day, that I realize that I was snappish or I was depressed because my body was hurting. And my body hurts a lot by a lot I mean frequently. I think I'm sort of feeling sorry for myself and I know there's no oppression Olympics, and I know that I'm allowed to feel sad or sorry for myself or like I have needs that aren't being met. No matter how good I have it. I'm allowed. So I have permission from myself to feel whatever kind of way I feel about it, you know?

There's a big beautiful world out here, and what with the trauma of the pandemic, and 45's presidency, exhale, and can't even bear to say that man's name. But what with everything that went down, I feel like I've been hiding for years, I feel like I haven't been able to be fully myself for years and that my skill and my joy have both been buried maybe about 80% of the time? I have skill with people, I have joy with people, and I haven't wanted to admit it, and I haven't had therapy that was just for me and basically about a year, but I've been stuffing my feelings again and I've been feeling infantilized and I've sort of let myself get sidelined. Or get smaller? Getting smaller is more familiar to make other people comfortable. Is that why I've done it? I'm used to doing that to hiding myself to be less of a bother. I'm used to going off on my own by myself because it didn't feel like it was worth it to other people to have all of me there.

Questions I still find myself asking myself: What am I good for? And to whom? I managed to stop the spiral usually before I start saying to myself I'm no good to anybody because I know that's flat out incorrect. But I frequently have to talk myself out of saying something like I'm less important than ex or why

There was this one time three or four years ago I think, where my wedding anniversary with Jeff landed on a Thursday. And at that time his regular date night with Jen was on a Thursday. He says to me something like it's not like it's all that important it's fine if I have date night right? So I say sure have date night. And then I tore myself up all night, grieving something that I couldn't even quite put words to. Sort of like he didn't value me if he didn't value the anniversary. I can't remember if he ever apologized for that, I can't remember if I ever asked him to. But I guess I haven't forgiven him for it.

This is a great big giant ramble I'm just going to talk about some things.

My friend Eric a wrote a Twitter post sorry Tumblr post recently about a therapy session that she had in which her therapist said that most people don't create playbooks for how to interact with other people or for specific events. And she said that she was surprised, I replied something like sounds fake but okay, because honestly I can't remember a time in my life when I did not do that. I'm always trying to create rules sets for my behavior. It's easier when it's people I don't care as much about. The rule book for Jeff is complicated. Partly because we have a tangled up mess for our recent sex life kinds of things.

Here's some of my observations about that not necessarily sex. Things like I'm the one who initiates I love you. I hear a lot of I love you too. I'm the one that's just thank you when he does something for me but I almost never hear it I'm the one who gets the impatient reaction from him when I don't hear him the first time but I swear to God there's a lot of times where he doesn't reply but he acts like he did and maybe it is the fact that my hearing has been decreasing and getting worse but I think I'm looking straight at his face sometimes when I ask him something and I have to wait several seconds and then he looks up as though he's replied and says yes or no or whatever with an impatient tone as though I should have heard it. I think it's just a careless miscommunication but I would like him to be careful I would like him to pay the same amount of attention to my words as I paid to his to detach himself from other concerns when we're speaking the way that I detach myself from other concerns, I put down my book I pause when I'm listening to I get up and come find him in a different f****** room. In that regard it feels like I'm making a lot more effort than he does.

But I must acknowledge, that he makes a lot of effort in other regards. His love language is still doing things for people. I have to remember, and I have to notice, that when he does something for me, maybe it is a cleaning task I don't want to do, or maybe it is fixing something for me that I've said I wanted to fix but don't ever get around to. He does those both with some regularity and like I literally have to notice and consciously put that into memory, and translate that as that action is love. It is, to my brain it is literally like having to go to Google translate when I see something in Russian. In a similar way I go to Google translate and I say I love you, and I put it through the acts of service translator, and I try to find the things I can do to show him that I love him because the words aren't meaningful to him in the same way that they are to me The words he's already said that the words don't nourish him the way that they nourish me. I wish he could take an effort to use the words some of the time, it was so shocking to me when potential new sweetie ( I already feel like I'm f****** that up) New sweetie has been complimenting me and using words to appreciate me and I just don't know how to take that in anymore. It's like I've been, I guess I have been away from people long enough that speaking people languages is hard now like that part of me is atrophied. I feel really isolated, yeah.

When to go back to the oppression Olympics that I was mentioning before none of this is getting out of this whole pandemic bologna without damage and trauma and stuff. Things are way better for Americans right now than they were for the last 4 years, but we're not healed, do you know? We were in an abusive relationship with someone who had control over and influence over our lives It's like when you have a job in which nobody cares if you burn yourself out or not. It's like when you have a boss that's verbally abusive, the same way that 45 was, or threatening the way 45 was. Or threatening to your loved ones and friends and family in the way 45 was.

Is there a marker in the DSM-5 for having been an abusive relationship with your government? I don't feel like there's anyone I can talk to about this right now but I just have this deep deep grief and all of the ways in which the former administration intentionally damaged and wounded and frightened and traumatized huge swaths of the population. I feel damaged and wounded and frightened and traumatized, but none of my smart friends are really talking about this, like well we survived let's move on sort of flippantly. But the thing is not all of us did survive raise dad died of covet other friends family also died a couple of people I knew peripherally died from the failure to act other previous administration People I know moved out of the country, because they felt so profoundly unsafe being who they were under 45's presidency.

It's a lot.

I made a post yesterday or the day before, about being very unhappy that morning when I woke up. In retrospect I wonder whether there might not have been a hormonal blip on the radar, but I was able to hold on to myself, and I was able to sort of collect what spoons I had available, and to borrow my friend Jen roses metaphor, I pulled out all of the forks that were stuck into me that day and an attempt to restore some more functioning and to find my way into the world with just a calmer head? Pulling out forks might look like following the routines you already follow in the morning, looking after the cat, taking your meds and drinking your water. Maybe taking some acetaminophen. Maybe pooping? In my case it turned out that pooping restored a spoon or two. I didn't even know it was bothering me until I resolved the issue!

Kinda like when you have a hangnail and all you can think about is the fact that your hangnail is bothering you, until you can find the nail scissors or clippers or nippers to fix it, that small niggling pain takes a surprising number of brain cycles away from active usage.

I don't have any solutions tonight. But I appreciate the fact that my technology, and this web page, and this community of people who may or may not choose to read this long-ass post, can allow me a few moments of blowing off steam and maybe I can have some clarity tonight.

Thanks for reading. I might go make some decaf tea and do some repair work around the house I'm not doing it to be worthy I'm just doing it because it needs to get done.

Chop wood carry water, right?

Today I learned that a wonderful silly human, excellent writer, famous for her cooking and her purple pigtails, her sparkly pens, her subversive encouragement of neighborhood children to shenanigans ie things like glitter bombing. She was an excellent writer and frequent contestant on
therealljidol, LJ Idol, for many years.

A loving friend, snarkmeister, and yarn addict, has Gone Into The West.

Saw the news on Facebook from a mutual friend.

She was lj-user mac_arthur_park.

Alicia deserved a better break in life. Her grin and her joyful attitude were both contagious and loving.

Oh this hurts. Wasn't Covid. Was some pre-existing condition neither she not her doctor had on their radar.

...dammit. I was serious about flying out to fuckin' North Carolina to meet her and buy all the groceries for making a giant feast for her and all her People after this Covid bullshittery was sorted.

I'm feeling wrecked.

Gods. Her poor Spousebeast... 😭😭😭

Something about the smell of sunwarmed star Jasmine turns me into an 8 year old, lips and fingers blue with cold, and warming myself next to my brother and sister on the sunny wall of the garage.
I mean. That's how you survive hours of Marco Polo (my sister Jen cheated! :) ) and dares for how long you can swim under water (Becky) and learning how to do flips off the diving board (my brother Scott, I was too chicken but I loved the "Nestea plunge" and sitting at the bottom of the deep end as long as I could!)

Happy birthday Scott. Lots of love and happy memories of sunburns and rolling down the back lawn, of your baseball games and helping you with your math homework (and that was when I decide to go into teaching: he had a "lightbulb moment" when I explained something, and I got addicted).
Shit. He'd have been 46 today... As always, #fuckcancer

I'm going to outlive this cat. I know it, I knew it, but now it's actually becoming obvious, his health is failing.

I haven't done the no no no tantrum often in my life, certainly it did no good for me to do so as a child...

Have you ever wanted to tackle the Reaper and drag it away from someone you love? Tangle it up in Its own robes, confuse and confound it?

How am I supposed to do this. How do I let, or help him, go across the rainbow bridge?

We Remember Them

In the rising of the sun and in its going down,
We remember them.
In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter
We remember them.
In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them.
In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of lsummer,
We remember them.
In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.
So long as we live, they too shall live,
For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.

Text by Rabbis Sylvan Kamens and Jack Riemer from Gates of Prayer, R.B. Gittelsohn

I thought I had a lump in my breast.
Yes, THAT kind of lump.
Turns out I was wrong
thank GODS I was wrong

 

I didn't let myself have time to react today, to release, to let go of the holding-on I've been doing ever since I first suspected, something like two months ago...

 

and just finished a HARD workout with Tal... I told her about my appointment and my worries from today, and that I wanted to "sweat out all the stress"... she said, with a grin, "we can DO that!"

 

and we did.
hells, halfway through, she even made me RUN, like seriously RUN THROUGH THE GYM and around the other people working out, in a loop around the two guys playing basketball, who looked honest to goodness surprised to see this two-and-a-quarter hundred-pound chick pelting after her zippy little 98 pound trainer...

 

but I kept up. *grin*
Tal *gets* without me saying it that I get all locked up in my head (most of my life) and deep in my bones when we work out... and she pulls out something crazy like this, and it pops me back out into reality.

 

so, okay, once I stretched out and cooled down, I did wind up in the locker room ambushed by sobs for about a second.

 

like omg I dodged a bullet there kind of thing

 

like what am I doing with my life

 

just this enormous almost panic attack... can you have a "relief attack?"

 

shuddering, head on the bench, hunkered down, my face in the shirt I'm about to put on...

 

I'm outside now, baking in the car because I needed to write this down.

 

the value of being IN the body cannot be measured, and yet I usually take it for granted.

 

being in the Body fixes some things that the Mind creates.

 

I want to remember that.