Grief & the Expectation to Look Like an Ass

Grief. Five letters seem an inadequate capsule for the experience.

My life has become a strange desert. The surface of Mars, maybe. Full of echoes, ghosts, intermittent sandstorms.

Is there beauty or life left in her? I wonder. I feel doubtful but the circle of love around me is vehement, "No, Chancey. You're just hallucinating right now. There is no desert. No barrenness of which you speak."

I throw rocks at the love. Kick sand at it. No way. Can't possibly. Full of shit. Or pity for a lost cause.

Then, the bitch comes in. Hey fuckface - your self doubt, hate, deprecation, absorption make me SICK. Seriously, get over your damn self. For fuck's sake. Do you think you're in some unique situation? NO. Millions have survived.

Then I get numb. The only thing piercing the numb is a raging appetite and womb ready to end this endometrium's entire LIFE.

I must figure out how to survive. Because once I do, the desert hallucination passes. Life and love and passion and joy will be accessible. I'm not naive enough to think I'll be hunky dory, that my predisposition to depression and anxiety will magically dissolve. BUT - there will be more balance rather than this rabid wild thing called emotion dragging me behind it.

I will establish an anchor and domesticate, refine.

Find or create a core of power.

I can't expect grace over night. I can expect to look like a complete ass and the weakest, most embarrassing human on the planet as I go.

I must trust in myself. My decisions and instinct. Don't overthink it. Just go through it. Hit the underthink edge a few times, learn, nod, and commit to memory until it becomes easy to do, eyes closed. Get deft as FUCK at navigating that, and the rest will follow.

Nothingashes or universe

The neighbor has dominated the laundry room this evening. Looks like laundry day is delayed yet another day.

Another day.

A day later, the life-ending mindgames have de-escalated. Trapped banshee howl to sleepy mumble. Distracting but far easier to let pass without a flinch.

Hard to believe how quickly pretend normal took over.

My skin escaped the hours long attack relatively unscathed. But maiming imagery in my head belongs to a true crime file. Bruised viscera, bleeding wounds, and exposed bone everywhere.

I exist under a glossy novacaine clearcoat. I feel my face smile at people, hear my voice reflex respond to the people around me. I dress the part. Even act the part.

My diligence forging sanity in the work related insanity around me doubles as sympathetic magic for the work I'm doing at the soul level. Yesterday, I was subject to the shitty code of my own legacy programming.

I am not 100% happy with my choices at the moment. My confidence has wavered after last night. But maybe that's because I've lost sight of "rule" 2 - no one gives a FUCK about me - and "rule" 3 - I'm what matters to me because I'm all I've got if no one gives a FUCK.

Losing him is like someone I love having died. Knowing I'm ultimately responsible for pulling the plug is devastating. Now we're both trying to breathe on our own. He seems to be beating the odds. I started promising enough but I'm struggling to make it.

Yesterday I flailed in angst to plug it all back in. The oxygen deprivation burned holes into my lungs and heart. All the poison and pain choked me up.

To no avail. He was not responsive. I was scared for my life. He promised to be there for me in emergencies, insisted I go to him, despite relationship status.

But through no fault of his own, he was not.

Maybe the message, my lesson here is just one in self sufficiency. I learned this lesson quite young being so underparented. But my coping strategies were all not all the best.

Now my situation may be giving my the opportunity to cope better, to grow stronger. The opportunity has come at great personal loss, risk, pain, and destruction. In my mind's eye, I'm looking in a mirror and seeing myself wrapped in nothing but nakedness and fire. The skin crisps and crackles in various spots, with burning embers spitting sparks through the charred cracks in my flesh.

No one wants to get close to an on-fire person.

My imagination wanders to a possible future state, where I've mastered the fire and all the burning embers become stars in a brand new internal universe and all lost sound finds a home to live, propogate, and evolve into song, story, and meaning.

I prefer that future to the other - burn and collapse into nothingashes.

Last night, I had the longest breakdown and crying jag I've ever had in my entire life. The only reprieve was a desperate visit to a friend's, but it came back as soon as I got home.

I cried for hours. I'm NOT suicidal but I've been bombarded by more suicidal thoughts in the past 24 hours than I've had in my life.

I called my ex. In a panicked plea. I can't promise him anything since I'm unstable as fuck. But he's the only one I can call for this stuff and promised to be there for emergencies like this.

He ended up not answering. My priority in his phone was too low to get through his night setting. We're fixed that in numb fashion this morning.

It's a relief. But at the same time I'm disgusted with my weakness right now. The suicidal thoughts. The levels of desperation and depression and panic.

I obviously survived, without him having to come over. If he had, there would have been no touching despite the bed to be physically held, but his presence would have calmed me.

It took a few more hours to wind myself up so tight, my body gave up in exhaustion.

I'm so tired. I feel like a migraine is going to whack me in the face sometime soon.

I'm just so fucking mentally and emotionally unwell right now. I'd call out but have two meetings to run.

The bad thoughts are around his judgement of my choices, the thought that he's gone forever/moved on, feeling torn between compromising myself and going back I'll equipped to save my spot or remaining committed to myself knowing he's already building something with intent to be romantic and long term so I'll be too late.

I don't want to put myself first. It's painful. Scary. Judged by the person I love more than anyone in the world because it hurts him so deeply.

He doesn't sound like he wants to be with me again anyway. He says I don't deserve him right now. But right now I want to figure it out in my own. That's not what makes me undeserving in his eyes - it's the idea of getting physical/sexual needs fulfilled by another.

I get that that's painful. It's painful for me thinking the same about him. Seeing the photo of him and that beautiful girl.

The thing is I can't have him wait around for this undetermined time while I figure stuff out. It's not fair. Also there are too many things he and I have to work though in ourselves and each other. Plus we have history that gets in the way of progress, at least for me.

So I chose the lesser of evils for a self discovery endeavor I feel immense guilt for even needing and choosing.


What it boils down to is yes, I seek out physical relief in the forms of various exercises, drinking alcohol weekly, and coming alone or with another.

The latter may not be traditionally healthy in my situation. But it works and I am extremely selective/careful about that, especially since physical is inextricably tied to emotions for me.

I think my period is coming. Because the level of anxiety attacks, suicidal thoughts, and non stop crying was too extreme to not be hormonally induced. I felt like a different person.

I am not sure how I'll make it today. I think I need to take a day off this week to recover.

Yoga tears

I fell apart doing hip openers and shavasana. I haven't stopped crying.

I miss him so much. Despite the painful parts, he loved me so well and so deeply, easily matching my intensity. I often think that kind of match for me will be hard, if not impossible to find again whenever I'm ready for another relationship.

"Our final embrace, you won't turn, I won't chase... "

"I'm sorry, baby. You were the sun and the moon to me. I'll never get over you, you'll never get over me."

I'm so so sad. We put our whole hearts and souls into each other. 

It hurts so badly.

Pathetic & who cares

It's quiet inside today. Gray overcast seems to muffle things outside to soft humming. The lone exception being the woman digging through the garbage, having a rowdy conversation with another woman digging in bins across the way, playing a music box she just found. 

I'm sitting here in a towel because I'm too lazy to get dressed after my shower. I'm posthungover from a wonderful night with a good friend.

I'm alone now. It feels weird. There is dull tension in my chest, as if to ponder, "Does this feel good? Or is this awful?" I'd venture with the three people I now seem to be simultaneously, it's likely both.

I emailed him today to ask him where the SD card is with all of our pictures and videos on it. He has not replied yet. He said he'd quit computers, that he was addicted and it led down our path to ruin. I see its contribution but am unsure of its weight in our breakup.

Anyway, if he vastly reduced his computer usage or connectivity through electronics, then I'll probably be waiting a while. 

That's not the only thing I emailed him today. I have achings to be with him again. The lure of his impassioned promises feed my malnourished emotional bank. I told him I miss him. That I love him. That I do contend with these urges to be with him again right now rather than wait. I nearly caved and called him in a particularly horrific 5 minute period of time today.

It's really, really bad.

• Chewed cuticles
• Excess snackings 
• Urges to indulge retail therapy (which I have given in to more than I'd prefer - and while most are justifiably "needed" items, a few have not been)
• Crying uncontrollably
• Alcohol consumption increase (I'm kind of okay with this one since I don't often have more than 1 a day)
• Depression
• Anxiety so bad it's physical
• Stress induced acne
• Less professional than I prefer to be
• Difficulty focusing

I'm intermittently numbed out beyond capacity which makes it difficult to get consistently excited or joyful for what IS going well. Fortunately I do have good friends and family and some interesting development with my career to grant me reprieve. They bring balance to my life and help me restore my focus.

My brother's birthday is Monday. I spoke with him this morning before he headed to bed for the day. He seemed so distant from me. I'm worried I let too much time pass between visits and that he resents me. His schedule flip flop of daysleeping and night wakefulness is worrisome too though not unexpected entering summer months.

I plan to stop by nonetheless, fears and all. My Pop agreed to accompany me to the Filipino bakery to get some birthday treats. He's a sweetie.

Suddenly, I'm being hit with a wave of exhaustion, like a brick to my chest. My head feels heavy.

This is all so pathetic. 

I don't think I care enough though and I'm nice enough to myself now to know it's okay that I'm not adulting as well as I have or could when feeling the equivalent grief to that of someone close dying.

Good or not

I am at least three people right now.

Person one pines and begs that I return to him right now. "It's not too late. It's been a short enough time that if I called, he'd be open to working on all the things he said he would. Maybe he could remain patient while I figured out this self stuff. The love is SO good. So special. Don't let it go."

Person two, assures I'm on the right path and recommends patience. "This is 100%  necessary. If it is meant to be, he and our situations will be ready to try again in the end. Focus. The sooner I get through it, the sooner I move to answers and living life and loving as a better person. Stay strong. There is selflessness in this selfishness."

The third is the beginning of who I am to become. I can't quite make out her words yet. She urges I don't sink back into being person one, suggesting like person two, that this IS the way back to healthy love that doesn't require me to be a detriment to myself. 

Life is messy. I vacillate from hope and excitement for the future to deep urges to pick up the phone tell him I'll commit to him this early on. It takes every fiber of my being to say "no", like a true addict.

He promised he'd do anything and everything for me. Change. Even marry me. I believe he believes that. The offer was huge, beautiful, everything I pined and dreamed for in 5 years. I said no, and now I've broken two hearts - the heart of a beautiful, loving man and the heart of a woman too incomplete to bear.

I'm not sure I'm a good person. Formerly my schema for a "good person" did not include crushing hearts and declining love. This means one of two things MUST occur: I adapt the good person schema with the lessons I'm learning knowing my intentions OR I accept I am not a good person at all. The latter sends me into the familiar spiral of hating myself - which is truly unproductive and self-absorbed in the most negative of ways.

I've never been stronger.

But I've never been weaker.

Between work, friends, music, reading, writing, driving around alone, and compulsive self development, I sit in this massive pool of grief. Now that we're really cut off, it's fucking intense. I haven't known such core crushing sadness since my mom died.

It's smile. Laugh. No filter. Anxiety attack. Drained. No filter. Laugh. Ugly cry and sob hysterically. Numbnumbnumb. Serious

I miss him. I love him.

My head hurts.

Three rules

Woke to 4:30 AM ringing in my ear. First thoughts were, "This is the day. Don't you fucking do it. Just get the fuck up. Fuck everything. GET. UP. YOU. WHORE."

I did. 

Stared my stress induced acne-marred face in the eye. "I don't care." 

Popped in contacts. "You're fine. Because you don't care."

Slipped on the yoga pants. "It's awful but you're still alive."

Shirt. "Fuck it."

Socks. One inside out. "Who gives a fuck."

Strapped my mobile phone to my arm like a gun. "Yes. You pathetic piece of shit."

Hooked the earbuds into my ears. "That's more like it, bitch. IV the loudest, fucking electronic station into your stupid, beautiful, fucking skull. You hear me!?"

I did.

Then, I ran. I kept running. 10 minute mile. Maybe less. My best one yet.

It pleases me. And yet it doesn't matter.

Today is the day. Finality rings louder than the alarm. 

As I sit in evaporating sweat, here to write whatever comes to mind, the rules come to mind.

What rules? More principles. But I am going to think of them as rules. It's survival, you understand.

I've been asked to contemplate. These rules are bullshit. Because absolutism is bullshit. 

But, absolutes are talismans. Tools to projectile me out of muddy empathy, emotion, uncertainty, duress. The rules I was given are:

Rule 1 - You're a whore.

"Are you a high priced whore? Or a cheap whore?"

Rule 2 - No ONE gives a fuck about you.

"Who the fuck cares? No one. What matters to them is THEM. So I ask again - why DO YOU care so fucking much? Think about it."

Rule 3 - You are ALL that fucking matters. You mean EVERYTHING.

"You ARE a THEM to them. What matters to YOU is YOU. Fuck 'em. Since you are all that matters. What the FUCK do YOU care about? Really, really?"

See? All lies. Incomplete. Totally stark. Skeleton without flesh. 

But it's all true. For every single human that pops out of a womb somewhere. 

I want to be a high priced whore.

I want to give a HUGE fuck about LIFE.
Transcend a legacy because I'm strong enough to see it for what it is and call it unacceptable for me. Then, create a new one from the raw, untouched path before me.

Eke out an existence - not out of some exciting adventurism (although, I can wear that filter for limited periods) - but out of pure necessity. This is required to live.

Anything else is NOT living. NOT living = dead/might as well be dead.

Survival. My depression near suicide years ago taught me the same thing. If nothing about me matters, I can DO anything.

It's freeing. It is life. I found it again.

And why the FUCK would I waste life?

Fun with hormonal surges and the spectrum of life

I wasn't sure I wanted to keep writing here - and I may stop and find another place to do this.

Shawn told me he has shown it to others. That they judged my choices in the most negative light. That I'm doing the wrong things. Friends old, or new, shared or not, I'm not sure. I suppose it does not matter. They know only a % of HALF of the equation. And as friend to the man I've put in such misery and pain, they really should be doing and saying whatever they can to support him and his healing with whatever information they've got.

And they are right about the selfishness. I am a malnourished soul/mind who has finally, become self aware enough to understand dramatic change is necessary. Tectonic shift to make way for something so long neglected. I struggle calling this selfishness self nurture and care when I see the wounds it causes.

This is battle between the old and the to be. The casualty I grieve most is Shawn. And at times, the old Chance.

I feel ill today. In the past I would have chucked this up to my brand of insanity just digging its claws into my prefrontal cortex (fucking right between the eyes) and my heart. Maybe that is true.

But after a long, emotional Father's Day weekend, I invited myself over to a friend's where I ramblestumbled into the realization my hormones have gone out of whack. I should have known with the trend I've seen in the past 48+ hours - uptick in anxiety, panic, anger; voracious appetite - for chocolate/mindless snacking; bad headaches; and my skin reverting to that of a brain chemistry afflicted teenager.

I'm ever grateful to my friend, and not just for yesterday.

He's been an amazing support through all of this - I worry, to his detriment from time to time. I've certainly had good people in my life but I have held nearly every one of them at arm's length.

It's rare to let others into the Chancebubble.

But, he's been so extraordinary in providing safe and accepting space for me - to the point that the level of intimacy verges into a territory I'd reserved for my partners or very best friends (the former of which I do not have/am not in a condition to have and the other questionable).

He has been patient. Never overbearing about "coming in", just expressive, clear, gentle. He's like the Chance Whisperer and somehow traversed the bubble barrier without setting off my epic alarm system.

I can tell him - I think I have in various ways - but he will never grasp how powerful or remarkable he's been or what a feat it is to get through the way he has without being eaten alive or sonic boomed into mountain rock.

I will never be able to repay him and I'm not sure I have much in offering anything comparable back. But I have grown to call and think of him as a real friend. When people make it to that tier in my life, I there for them, always, as loving as I can be in the way they need - gentle to brutal, so long as I'm not in peril myself.

I see various experience types in life as belonging to these spectrums of possibilities and degrees. His Chance Whispering abilities - combined with two other mentors, a therapist, a book, and my own relentless determination have helped me see new degrees of those possibilities.

One such spectrum starts in my childhood. My roots took hold in dismissive soil comprising rejection, dismissiveness, shame, emotional abuse - all repressing or murdering self-expression and joy. I write this not to wallow in the negativity and baggage, but to help release my grip.

Because that baggage has no place where I'm going.

Since my childhood, I've ventured out, drawn to people who took me down the experience spectrum where these things grew less in severity. Until I started seeing things like acceptance, love, caring, appreciation, joy.

But still, I unconsciously gravitated toward people and situations that, when combined with my combo of experiences, personality, and brains - still kept me too heavily weighted on one spectrum to truly uproot myself from the past.

General depression/anxiety and mood disorder doesn't make it any easier, either. A fact of which to be aware, not a pity party.

As linear as the spectrum analogy sounds, my progress is so cyclical, albeit at least in a general direction.

I cycle. From strong to weak, weak back to strong, over and over. Every time I cycle back through weak, the old judgment creeps back. If I let it in, I maul myself. Savagely.

But I've gotten better. Way better. I pull myself back, reserve the my urges to perpetuate the attacking I learned as a child. As I grow, it's easier to observe the judgement, dismiss IT instead of myself, and allow compassion for myself until I cycle back toward strong again.

I don't always succeed or do so gracefully. Normal hormonal flux in my literal menstrual cycle always make me prone to relapses in to the depression, mood, and panic issues I already contend with.

Anyway, ,y friend saw this struggle last night (probably at other times too, since I'm pretty transparent with folks I trust). So far he's still there. Just patient. Accepting. Gentle. Smiling.

Not a crutch. An encouraging, positive force, for at least this part of my journey. I keep checking in about that too. Because I don't want to end up where I began.

Combined, these people and efforts are like a cast holding, embracing a broken limb to encourage the bones to mend as straight as possible. I tell Shawn it's like I am this half person and my relationship with him as good as it was at its best, was like a growth inhibitor for me. No one's "fault" - just a shitty reality of our particular combination.

I'm sad that Shawn could not be a part of that at this point in the journey. I'm not sure he will ever understand nor any of his supporters he might be sharing this with. But none of that matters now. I'm going to accept that and let it go.

Trigger Warning & Ultimatum

On Sunday he gave me an ultimatum.

To remain faithful to him. Re-establish some form of US.

I had told him I missed him. Missed us. What we used to be.

It's true. I still love him so much. He's a good man in so many ways. Will be for who ever he ends up with.

But he repeatedly called me selfish and evil. Boiling the conflict down to monogamy despite us being broken up. He repeated that I'm leaving him to "get more dick."

No. Fuck that nonsense. But, I know why he says that. I know he focuses on this one possibility because - outside of the breakup itself - the idea of me being intimate with anyone other than him now is painful. It's interpreted as a threat. To his security, his sense manhood. Humanness.

But it's NOT about that or even him directly.

It's about me. I don't know if he gets that. I am not sure I expect him to at this point. Maybe it isn't even fair to expect he could really, knowing how much we love each other.

Him calling me selfish and evil for my choice to pursue myself is a knife in my soul, slicing through my deepest of vulnerabilities. I'd always thought pursuing anything for me was deeply wrong. Stupid. Pointless. Selfish. Worthless. "Like me."

It triggered all of the old tapes to play at once in the grandest of orchestra. It brought me to my knees over a lake of fire. I was ready to throw myself in.

"I can't."
"I don't want to live anymore."
"Please come over and end it. End it for me."
"Kill me."
"I want to be dead."


"You will never find a guy who will treat you 99.9% as well as I have. You will regret this for the rest of your life. I won't be here for you again. You made this choice. NOT me."

Translation - You fucked up. You are not lovable and you are not worth pursuing this identity search. You are responsible for my choice to close you off forever.

I recognize that I am making the most adult decision I've made in my life.

He is asking me to compromise it, try another route that seems least likely to support my goal, and all because he thinks I'm out fucking other people. Or one other person. Either way. It isn't about fucking or sex.

It's about discovery. He can't understand it. I've tried. It was so important to me that he understand it. But I'm so traumatized by my suicidal scare, I don't know that I have the energy to care about that or consider other paths other than those that are most supportive and protective of my soul.

Because I do want to live. I want to survive. Then, thrive and kick ass.

Queen replaces king

Just like that, the new bed is here in the space. The space is the same. But it looks massive.

The mattress is softer. Yielding. Warm. Embracing my body. Queen replaces king.

It's strange to feel so heavy with sadness yet bursting with potential energy. Deep, dark, the air seems pregnant, waiting.

She's smiling. I know this. Even though I can't see or touch her. She's there. I feel. Sense her squatting, head down, thighs tensed. So kinetic. Snakey and springy. I wonder what she'll be like when she's here? If I'll like her. If anyone will like her.

But their preferences don't matter here anymore. I've got a big Fuck You cast hold me together until these soulbits finish transmuting all this life and death into some fucking amazing tapestry I dance with in the sunlight and wind.

Yes. Some day. And only I must like her. Love her with all the ferocity with which I love others.

The song on this playlist lets the truth in my heart come out to dance. I let it undulate its private show. Just for me, for now. Soft. Tentative. Tender. Vulnerable and a bit shamed and proud of how intense it feels to love, to care, to desire. It is the stuff that animals guard with all of the fight and flight.

It is also the stuff of amazing fucking beauty. I want to call it beautiful, give it room to breathe, uncoil like a bellydancers limbs revealing a body in glorious sensuality and richness. So I do.

The Bed

I'm waiting for this pang to die. A minor chord.

Steady bass and drum. Pang. Pang.

I don't tear at my leg skin. Crowded, ivory teeth gnaw slender fingertips, nibbling around long nail beds. "The best kind," every manicurist had ever told me, "you're lucky."

Another swig of liquid numb. Summer ale to wash down the ail.

Tonight is my last night in our bed. Well, his bed.

I contemplate slipping under the covers, moving fingers from an anxious mouth to the wetness beginning to burn where thighs meet.

It might ease the pain. One last time, for old time's sake.

But it remains unfolded and tucked in my head. A passing hiccup in a brain addled by the heart's burning.

I created something tonight for the first time in weeks. Washed the last of the king sized sheets save the set I'm sleeping on tonight. His towels sit in the dryer waiting for me to will myself off my ass.

I'm exhausted but I delay my body from sleep.

A part of me perks up. Tomorrow night, I sleep in the new bed. Selected without anyone's preferences in mind but my own.

Maybe it'll be okay.

Alone is miles deep

Alone is miles deep.

My heart is a canyon of grief. 

There is a voice, a little girl whimpering. My ears shiver around her. Her pleas. The fire, she complains, is too hot. Her skin burns.

It's torture. I'll die, she stammers.

Another voice emerges, paperdry but trickling faster into the space left behind. Talks about befriending the fire. Fire breathing, she insists, is not only possible; it is inevitable.

It is in your blood to partner with fire, ancestral inheritance awakening.

Take it all inside. Let it burn away artifice. Clear way for the authentic. Make space for passion. The birth will be painful but joy is sure to follow.

The girl is screaming now, so loudly she's drawn blood, spewing from her tiny mouth. 

I hold her but I spare my energy. No assurances. I just let her bleed out.

The Broken Column

A heaviness draws my focus to the crown of my spinal column. Dense, like an embedded supermagnet drawn to the polar opposite on the other side of the planet.

Will she snap? I wonder.

I think of Frida's Broken Column.

Hugh MacLeod - From "Ignore Everybody"

"Plus a big idea will change you. Your friends may love you, but they may not want you to change. If you change, then their dynamic with you also changes. They might prefer things the way they are, that's how they love you - the way you are, not the way you may become.

Ergo, they might no have any incentive to see you change. If so, they will be resistant to anything that catalyzes it. That's human nature. And you would do the same, if the shoe were on the other foot."

Losing Hope

Nag champa burning amber and blue in the pre-summer air, a long lost sadness sifts upwards through the sands of memory.

Maybe 7 years or so ago, a friend of a friend lost enough hope to hang herself in a cramped closet.

She left behind a teenage daughter.

I remember walking through her apartment in the days following. The air lay upon our bodies like a water logged blanket. It was hard not to choke, even with all doors and windows open. The sounds from outside seemed muted even in the city.

We sat on the floor, lit a candle, and talked to her. I don't know if it was more for her or for my friend. But I do remember putting my heart into it. And comforting. In the loss of hope so painful, she felt in one, small but all encompassing moment, without another choice.

Hope is a powerful thing. When you have it, it can sustain you. When you lose it, it can defeat your very existence.

There are varying factors and a vast spectrum behind have and have none for hope.

I'm not sure why she enters my thoughts now. Or why she seems important to my "right brain". I never knew her, only of her. I knew her good friends whose spines sagged c-shaped after her death.

It's over/Vessel named Chance

It's over.

I think at least I was able to convey that this was not solely about all the things he/I/we did that resulted in the emotional disconnect. That was only a part. Catalystic.

The other is me.

I feel sapped of all soul. I have a few droplets left and I am hoping they are enough to seed and respawn some life in this vessel named Chance.

Fuck me fuck me fuck me

Maybe it's not a good idea that I read his blog and he reads mine. I question my goodness as a human being. I'm smashing his heart. And I am breaking my own.

I am a destroyer of love.

The loudest rock music. Pound it into my fucking bones. Beat me to a pulp. I sit here between cases, customer retention, defect digs, and process analysis wanting to destroy my own life. Nothing so morbid as suicide but to just chuck everything at the garbage bin and run away. Quit this job, this life, and move to another town.

Crazy talk.

I share the same wants. Monogamy. Possible marriage. Lifelong companionship. Emotional intimacy.

But I am this ugly shape. I'm hardly ready and I never knew it. I'm the thing that doesn't fit. I am trying to become. I am trying to figure things out - but he needs a best friend to support him. I can't be the best friend AND the love interest when I'm questioning the very nature of relationships and myself.

Fuck. What if this is the last time we are Chance and Shawn? I thought that we would be forever. 

I want to scream. I want to run. I want destroy. I'm not sure what this all is. I keep this mask on tight, burying myself in the work. It isn't for anybody else to hold other than me. I am responsible for my own feelings and emotions and choices.

I will be there to accept and live through the repercussions. 

My therapist and I speak about the need for finding myself. Empathy breather. Turn inward toward myself. Hold myself like a cast to let the broken bones knit and mend themselves back together or form new, stronger, structures. How can I love anyone when I'm this disjointed? Am I lovable? Am I worthy? Do I trust myself?

I want the answer to be yes to those things.

Valley of Corpus Callosum

Waiting for the brain pill and coffee river to trickle its magic between all my synaptic crevices. Welcome to Valley Corpus Callosum. Population: my agitated soul.

I've decided. Each day has a personality. I've been doing that lately. Personifying the inanimate and abstract. Isn't that the mark of a crazy person?

Today's personality is oxymoronic. As I lay in bed this morning, delaying my day - wondering whether I should leap up and seize life or say fuck this shit and wallow in it - I was aware of two opposing spirits: Primal Anxiety and Confidence that the storm around and inside of me is fine.

I am the most uncomfortable I've been in a long time. Downright disturbed, distraught, tortured. Upset that I don't have it in me to DO things the way I was before in work and personal life.

But.

I daresay, I am almost eagerly accepting that this turmoil is absolutely necessary and is only turmoil in a moment along a spectrum of evolution. I can't put my finger on anything solid. I try to hold aside the judgment for my current inability to perform as well outwardly as I was before this madness took hold. "Temporary and necessary," I repeat to myself.

My boss compared this evolution to a platyhelminthes - a bilateral type creature that propels its soft but flexible body around with little flappy wing things. It's not pretty to look at but it is an interim stage.

The funny part is - we're ALWAYS in an interim stage. There is never completion. Not until you're dead in the ground. But even higher level than that- evolution-wise, we are all just in bodies that represent one stage of development in a longer chain yet to manifest.

At the soul level, I am playthelminthes. Unpretty. More obviously interim than polished.

I feel absolutely useless. Unmotivated. Even hopeless. Everything I have been seems to have become limp or rotted or awkward to handle. Everything I am becoming is still too soft, too raw, and equally awkward to handle.

So much crazy in one little body and mind.

I am seeking the support I need and spending time alone. Allowing myself to cultivate Chance, whoever she is. Once I have the who, there will be the what. Then, the how. And once that process is completed, I will be independently grounded.

Another thing about me. Empathy. The lack of definition and the gigantic empathy that consumes my being - is a gift. I think it was forged in genetics and an ill suited environment. I hold space for those around me, keeping them safe and supported. In doing so, I often temporarily lose track of where I end and they begin. Their thoughts and feelings become my own, and so theirs to mine. It makes loving intense and passionate.

It also makes the quest for self and independence an uncomfortable one. I have to keep these relationships at arm's length while I further forge around the empathy.

I want to help. I want to listen. I want to use this gift. But I can't do that properly until I define me.

That sense of shared space and union I hold for others, I realize that to lose one's self in another is not actually a bad thing at all (despite how distasteful that is for some) - it's the nature of empathy. That redefinition around two is the beauty from which healing springs!

It's the post-space holding snapping back that suffers in my undeveloped sense of self. That's why I must dial it in. Why I must do this. I have to get that in check to fulfill my best in this short freaking life.

This kind of evolution is not important to some people. Some people are okay with being defined solely by their environment. I have been that person. My own reason was I am programmed to discount myself.

Now, though, I am aware such evolution IS important though to ME. And, what's more is, I'm finally recognizing that what is important to me IS NOT something to dismiss, criticize, shame, or destroy. It is something to pay attention to. Love and nourish, even if it doesn't look/feel/sound the same as someone else's that I admire or wish to be more like.

No, for the first time in my life, I genuinely wish to be more like me.

Identity

Identity is an abstract concept that is taken for granted, dismissed in the sunlight of solid nouns like people, landmarks, possessions, careers that shape and anchor us.

But identity is the foundation that gives all these nouns their life and meaning to aliveness. When identity is starved and/or underdeveloped, these things imbue no spirit or substance - because the spirit or substance inside lacks the cohesion necessary for that meaning to take root, propagate, and flourish.

Nothing nourishes. At least, nothing external in isolation. Not even the well meaning people in our lives.

It's a long road. Journey to the center of self. Pioneering into depths before untouched because of engaged shame, ridicule, and stigma.

There are no tour guides. No handbooks religious or scientific. No maps other than the ones I draw for myself.

It is foreboding and feels fatal. But pressing on is worth the the injury if it means intense, 3-D life. My existence is too brief and I've perpetuated neglect too long in this 3rd or so of life now passed.

The swim

"It was the last time we swam together and out into the open sea. Like always, we knew each stroke to the horizon was one we’d have to make back to the shore.

But something was very different about that day. Every time Anton tried to pull away, he found me right beside him. Until finally, the impossible happened.

It was the one moment in our lives that my brother was not as strong as he believed I was not as weak. It was the moment that made everything else possible.....

You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it: I never saved anything for the swim back." - Vincent in Gattaca