Somebody Cares

(pieced together from accounts sent to various people on the 20th of December, 2022, when the events of this story took place)

Today was a crazy day.

I went to my doctor's appointment... And...

• I checked in about the psychiatrist’s assessment, and apparently I officially have a diagnosis now.
  

• I'm being prescribed an anti-anxiety medication to try for four weeks and see how it goes.
  

• My doctor is on board with making the best case he can for my ODSP application, to help me afford the counseling I'm trying to do and the medications we’re going to try.

I told my friends, while I was leaving the doctor's office:

I feel like I've just been handed a huge golden trophy inscribed with the words Somebody Cares. And a little like this can't be happening. This isn't the world I live in.

I.... Think I might be kind of in shock for the next few weeks. Or months. Or years.

The world isn't like this. Friends, scientists, anybody, run scans on the gold in this trophy. Tell me there aren't pockets of depleted uranium in it, because this does not happen.

Advice and Resentment: All Over Again

I come here for a change not presenting my own writing about my experiences, but the words of a friend who felt inspired to write about my experiences after hearing me relate a part of them.

A dear friend of mine shared a disappointing experience with a counselor just now, and I feel the urge to say something about this. The profession of counseling is naturally one of providing advice, one of giving counsel to clients. It’s entirely expected that a counselor will have opinions on how to improve a client’s behavior. And yet. 

There are people who have been talked over, who have been pressed down upon with the opinions of others throughout their lives. These people have spent a great deal of time treated as though they couldn’t possibly know what they’re doing. They have been imposed upon with well-meaning advice, time and again, to the point that they begin to lose their own voices. Their own agency becomes forfeit to the crush of external narration, telling their stories for them. 

It’s a counseling instinct to want to correct a client’s poor choices. A client’s working through reclaiming their agency and voice doesn’t mean the counselor is relegated to observation alone, or that all sharing of advice is harmful. It does however mean that counsel must be given with care. Someone going through this process, such as my friend, is very likely to set boundaries on being given advice, and is very likely to frown on advice being wrapped in polite disguises. Responding here by rejecting being relegated to observation is a false dichotomy, a trap of black-and-white thinking just like counselors everywhere try to guide clients out of. That negativity and accusation only refreshes those old hurts, no matter the counselor’s intentions. 

There is a middle path that I’ve learned to walk — one that should have been obvious to my friend’s counselor — though I still stumble from time to time myself. Offer. It is so easy to assume the privilege of being the expert, to throw advice out like people are blessed to hear it, and people all too often forget the simplicity of offering first. It is a habit that must be trained, but a very compassionate one, full of respect for a client’s agency and intelligence. 

"That sounds stressful. I have advice on how to handle it, when

you’re ready for it." 

"That’s a good start. Would you like to hear a way to improve

that, either now or in a bit?" 

Those are just two examples off the top of my head of how to offer, rather than impose. As a counselor, you have the luxury of patience, the luxury of writing your suggestion down and holding onto it, for when the pressure has been vented, for when the concerns have been validated, for when the urgency has faded. To give in to the dichotomy, and assume the privilege of the expert, is such a common kind of weakness. I know we can all do better, counselors and friends alike. 

In loving and hopeful defiance, 

Sable Seylerius

Grim November

It has been some time, and so I will explain.

Things began to be sour, I think, in August. Habits which were endurable in the short term so long as they were being worked on and would improve over time seemed to worsen, signs of improving grew sparse or there seemed to be subconscious resentment at the pressure.

Too much responsibility was placed on me.

There was cause, of course; there were extenuating circumstances. My Stars left their job, trusting to another to support us, and then he lost his job too. And there was much discouragement and despondency. None of us were in fit shape to carry the limp weight of the others while we were robbed of strength. And so I did my best at times, but neither was I - and I lashed out and growled and broke down often under the strain, so little rewarded, so little relieved.

I believe I am still blamed for my failure to hold up the heads of my companions during that time, as well as my own, but I plead that it was not within my power, and ought not have been expected of me. I had not enough participation. I had not enough support. I had not enough compensation to see me through it, not enough nor gentle enough reminders; reminders which are invitations, rather than chastisements.

Of course, it is an advanced difficulty to succeed, with me, to my standard, in giving invitation and not chastisement.

But this is how it went on. I carried far too much, seeking not to let others down, but I must in the end. My patience, my spirit, was overloaded for quite some time, and my vulnerabilities pricked when I was gathering enough air and lift to begin to get somewhere, such that that liveliness would easily and swiftly drain away, and I would lie again lifeless in a wasteland of bitterness.

I do not say that I held no responsibility nor blame for these cycles - O, I was part of them. My failure to speak my boundaries while I could still do so without cursing made things worse. I was at times negligent. I was at times evasive.

And so it went, and until I had a room of privacy to myself for a while (the gift of interim hosts in the city of Kitchener, and O my great gratitude to them for the privilege), for six months I had no place I could retreat to which was mine to be alone in, mine to rest in, and not need to share it, neither night nor day. Looking back it shocks me that I lived so long in these conditions, and I did not seem to realize that that was a problem.

Of course, I was caught up in wanting to be there, be present for Stars if they needed physical assistance to get up, and perhaps then, I ignored my own need for privacy, for a crook I could lay in on my own and be undisturbed. There are reasons for this, of course, reasons. But O it was surely a part of my growing twisted and impatient and bitter.

And so it went until a particularly bright-careless and manipulative episode, of some of my love's worst habits. And then I told them I would not marry them. Not now, not like this. And so I would need to return North and leave the country, for I had no other legal basis to stay. And it was sad and sour but felt necessary.

We moved several times, because as everything descended into a slough of despond, we would not organize cohesively enough to close a rental agreement and did not have a place to go by the ending of the old lease. And so there was a hotel one night, and an Airbnb for a half-week, and then another Airbnb for the rest of the month, with our things in a storage locker a long drive outside town, near to where we had hoped to rent a place, but it was a scam. A scam we would ordinarily have spotted, but we were desperate for a place by that time, of course.

Much of our things have been left behind. My friends I leave with less, materially, than they had before, and some bitter memories of my impatience and desperation and the guilt of having drawn it. But still though, my friends I leave in a pleasant place, a roomy apartment somewhat bare but well outfitted with such things as the kitchen that came with it. I leave them in a place with an extendable lease and the flexibility to adjust time there, so that they may be sure of their next leap's landing before arranging to leave. I leave them nearer to some people who have been friends of ours, that we wished to be close to... And still do now, but less so. Less, for there has been loss and grief and disappointment.

I leave my friends and I hope very dearly that I leave them better for having spent time with me rather than worse, for all that they have less materially now and our lessons from each other have been grim. November was a very slow, very sad and waiting and grieving month for me this year.

I hope to pick up my project again. I have not done so quite yet. I have a bit more of ensuring my next living-space to do first. I was in no condition then, really no condition for it.

And that is how it went.

Growing Pains

I am growing stronger. As documented in I Like Being This Person, I have been slowly healing. Although I am currently looking back at a week of tracked project work with the fewest hours since I started, I know and am capable of remembering that having continued to track my time and make my minimum quotas of time, humble though they are, is still an ongoing success, and a strength.

For two days, yesterday and most of the day before, I was down in a slump and lazy, after a sobbing breakdown Tuesday morning. And here I am awake, thinking about priorities, flitting from one thing to another, getting little things done here and then there, rather than getting trapped like a fly on the deadly adhesive thought of how very much there is to do.

It is strange, growing healthier. It feels strange, from the inside. Occasionally dramatic, but pretty much only in reflection or in my emotional extremes, blazing fury or torrential brightness which I worry will all spend itself out and leave me exhausted... and sometimes it does.

It feels strange that largely my improvement seems to be that I have gotten better at sleeping. It almost feels like magic sometimes how noticing my heaviness and excusing myself from my social contexts and going and laying down, no matter how much it feels like I "shouldn't be tired already", leads to my actually being able to sleep within just a few minutes. I don't exactly wake up feeling highly energized very often. I often wish I had someone to help pull me out of bed because lifting my body on my own feels exhausting in a sort of grim, repetitive persistence sort of way. But much of the tired that had been on my shoulders has gone once I can get moving and doing something, if I do something at all rather than just re-watching old YouTube videos.

Most times, I take my laptop with me, because it would bother me and keep me awake being tempted to go and get it so that if I can't sleep, I have it there to do things with. And I close it up and put it next to my bed, and sleep, comfortable enough in the knowledge that if I were to wake restless it would be there for me.

When I am well-rested, and sleeping more or less consistently during the nights and for long enough periods of time, wakefulness becomes different. It is more than once or twice a month that I feel distinctly capable of getting things done. I cook for myself, and while I am cooking, my mind wanders, and it seizes on ideas and desires and strings them together and insists I must write them down, tell my friends, do something to capture the resulting inspiration before it evaporates.

Sometimes it feels like I can't catch my breath and actually follow through on the ongoing project I've committed to, just because I'm so busy catching and coping with other inspirations and ideas for things I want to get done which are oozing out of my ears and eyes and mouth, burbling over and getting all over my face and in my heart so I can't focus.

It is as though my brain has formed a long, long queue of all the many things I have dreamed about while slogging through my days, half-awake; and so on the rare occasions I wake up, my whole workspace becomes covered in petitions to make them real.

I have learned important strategies from Finish It! for coping. I have been putting those things in writing but then putting them aside. I have learned important strategies for keeping going even when I don't feel like it at all. I have put consequences behind my quotas, and it has been working.

My life may be a heavy and clunking machine, sometimes clumsy and very base, but I have been getting some of its motors to stop coughing and dying so much and run sort of smoothly for a few hours at a time. Well, who'd have thought? It's exhausting work, but it can be done. And there's a bunch of neat stuff among the flies and dust being coughed out of this machine now that it's running well enough to actually disgorge some of the ideas which have been stuck in the pipes almost-formed for months.

How to Maintain a Healthy Relationship With Your Dark Side

I was asked for advice by a friend of mine about how to make peace with and come to accept their own darker aspects. Here is what I told them.

Things that I think might help:

• Taking some time to sit down and have a serious discussion about it. If you know someone you can trust with the information, you can tell them what you know, or suspect, about the experiences that caused whatever misshapen-ness or scarring of social and emotional growth your dark side stems from. Talking about the causes of our problems can help us understand and forgive ourselves and each other.

• Finding safe ways to indulge in dark tastes that suit you. Sometimes I love dark metal music and appreciate watching or reading visceral horror media. Guess why. Drawing, writing poetry or fiction, playing harsh music on an instrument or finding some other way to give it symbolic expression can be a way to let the shadows out without hurting anybody.

• Personally, I love going for long walks in the evening or at night and listening to a variety of music including things that are metal, gloomy, express alienation, doubt, pain or experiences of having inner demons, and/or include sound clips from dark situations.
  
  And just letting my mind roll and wander and visualize. Wear the horns and claws, or wings, or open wounds and showing bones and rotting flesh, or the metal parts and eldritch symbols, as part of my shifting self-image. When no-one is around me to hear, sometimes I let myself snarl aloud. Sometimes I sprint just to feel my muscles moving and feel physically powerful and predatory.
  
  That is a way that I use to "walk with my demons", and it helps me feel whole and in touch with the full range of myself.

I Like Being This Person.

Wait. I just said I like being this person. What happened?

And then, everybody laughed. My lovers and I had been talking about norms, policy-building between us. How to stay in touch across time zones - fewer hours than across the ocean now. Planning to reserve one convenient hour to connect to one of our busiest people.

We were talking about leadership. In our group of five, three are far more followers than leaders by preference. Maybe, maybe that's more two, and the third is on the fence. Two of us are more leaders than followers - and I'm one. I'm the louder one, the one who draws attention to it more often, who usually asks what telecommunications program we're using to voice chat, and suggests something to watch or to play, takes responsibility for remembering things we agreed we have to talk about.

But we have another leader, who usually stays quiet, who spends more time watching and less time saying what he sees. He gives careful prods but not ostentatiously. It's not his way. And he and I, it seems we work together well. Me the circus ringleader, he around the shadows at the edge of the ring of light. I asked again that he remember to remind me, if my shouting becomes too self-serving - I don't want my trained assertiveness only to serve my own preferences. And I'll try to give him time, and bite down on my jealousy when it has a problem with sharing the spotlight.

I asked him to tell me out loud that it was alright that I was louder, was showier, was the ringleader kind of leader that I am. Whether we really do work well together with this being a prominent part of the nature of our double act.

Good. Because, I like being this person. And I wouldn't want to have to go without it.

Wait... What happened?

And then, everybody laughed.

You're healing, he said.

Okay, crying. Crying again.

I'm on my second day of being back on my thyroid medication. There was a gap there for a bit, while we got more. But I'm just over the extra hormonal stress and mess of my period, and although I expected things to be harder while I was off my medicine for a week or so, and then back on again... All I've really had to cope with so far that's seemed worse than usual has been some waves of tiredness in the middle of the day. And I eat, and drink, and get excited with my loves and I listen to upbeat music, and they pass. And honestly, I have been getting short and broken sleep a lot of the recent nights too.

I've been here a month and a half, in the house of someone who wasn't surprised to see me, who wasn't pined after secretly for months on months - we've discussed my coming to see them for a long time, and they've said yes, that they would welcome me with open arms, and they have.

Our apartment is our apartment, they tell me. Ours including you (meaning me). Our food and drink is your food and drink too. You don't have to keep asking me whether you can have it.

Our apartment, then. It's a pretty place. Well maintained, simple and somewhat small but high quality and close to their work. I keep it tidier than they ever did - I asked first. We've discussed the matter many times, and I've gotten consent over and over again to go ahead and turn their lives upside down.

We watch heartful TV together. They've been showing me This Is Us. I've been showing them Steven Universe. They're started to show me My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I've had a bit of fun riffing on it and analyzing it.

With some prompting from me, they started to shift their focus away from the idea of signing up for a code college which would require them to be at a physical classroom for months and pay up thousands of dollars later down the line presuming they can find better work after the schooling. They're taking on some courses on Udemy instead for now - there was always some fear that they wouldn't be able to stick to it, but I'm here to help now. To ask what they're learning, and remind them to study regularly... but not too hard. ♡

We're doing it together. I'm picking up a Udemy course too, and suddenly I have a six month plan, to end in a working store website and all the experience it took to build it. This morning, a Saturday morning, we each spent a few hours on our different projects, in the same living room, taking time from time to time to hug and kiss or give back massages.

I send them to work with packed lunches. We can save money that way, and still eat deliciously. They don't mind - they like the food I give them. I keep our apartment clean, and cook, and when they can't walk on their own, I'm there to help carry them.

And I'm working through this course, and from time to time I just spend my day watching YouTube videos, but it's okay. Because it's not all the time. In my spare time, I get to reach out to people all along the edges of my online social network. I got to spend a half hour not long ago telling someone struggling with grief that they were not as alone as they felt.

And I still fret, sometimes. Of course I do. I worry that work that isn't done in a hired position isn't real somehow, isn't worth as much... but I know that isn't true, it's just... just one of the things that gets passed along through the deepest social memes and habits. And I don't have to know that all by myself anymore. My lovers will tell it to me over again as many times as I need to hear it.

I've been starting to look through listings for a house for us to move into once the lease here ends.

My Stars want me to stay here with them.

Everything is different now.

And I'm starting to think... Maybe I really don't ever have to go back.

Idle Months

It has been idle months since I last wrote here. I have been restlessly resting, waiting. The time has finally come. Tomorrow I leave this house. The next day, I leave this country, and perhaps I will never return.

I have been often dejected. This trip to Ireland has felt like a great big mess. I studied well what was little challenge to me - I allowed myself to be reclusive and stick to the company of a couple closest friends for the most part. I have often felt depressed, and struggled to remember what good I am. I have often felt like a failure. I set a time, though, and decided I would let myself be still until it was time to move again. I have at times utterly hated the stillness... but sometimes I have been able to sit still with some serenity and an ephemeral scrap of patience.

I have set myself to rest so that once it was time to move, I would be ready and eager to, and would appreciate the energy and newness. I worry a little and wonder more whether this bid to control the ebbs and flows of my energy and my stillness will actually work. I have never been good at planning and deliberately choosing these things. But then... once upon a time, in the life I grew out of, I think not being good at it was a necessary excuse for resisting the clamour of oppression which would have insisted I do things their way, not a way I could choose for myself.

Those days... are over. I do not need to be helpless in order to excuse disobedience from an unjust authority the same way I needed to once with mother. I believe I have been learning to let it go.

In that, at least, in those ways, self-searching still, digging deeper in trauma and questions of identity and complexity; in those very particular ways I have not been idle, the time has not been wasted. And indeed my closest, dearest friends have been a great resource to me, in listening and tolerating and sometimes understanding.

And so, the silence is broken, for now.

Ireland is over.

Let the next segment now begin.

Dear Diary: Time To Make A Plan

I came in to the campus just to write a Financial Accounting test today. And I sat it, and finished it, taking about 98 minutes out of what would have been an available 120 I think, although that may have been stretched out from 90.

I walked away from the testing hall with a bit of niggling frustration over trying to remember whether it was IAS 37, 38 or 39 which dealt with events after the reporting period. I've never been good at remembering arbitrary numbers and codes like that. I let it fade gently from my mind, and my thoughts settle on something else.

I need to stop not having a plan.

This morning I told my dear Stars that over the past few days, I've come to the conclusion that it's important I come around to admitting that coming to Ireland was a mistake. "And so I've said it," I told them. And so I have. It was a mistake to come here. It may have been a mistake I needed to make, in the situation I was in, needed to make and then learn from. But it was a mistake. Which is the English human shorthand way to say, I suppose...

I need to stop trying to justify this and figure out how to recover. Write it off, sell it for what scrap I can get for it.

What now?

It's strange how much difference that makes to my perspective, when none of my options have really changed.

Well... If I'm not assuming I have to stay, I need to have a plan to go. Plane tickets, dates, an address of someone who'll let me stay with them for a while when I arrive back in Canada, either for rent or otherwise. All of it flexible, ideally, so that if I do manage to get a paid internship here with a company that'll put me through my next year and offer me a place with them, I can pivot to that.
Huh. Using the word pivot that way on a personal blog makes me sound like a corporate dickhead. Well, not pivot, then. Switch to it. Adjust to land there.

So. Refundable plane tickets. Those exist, I'm pretty sure. How much time do I want to give myself? Couple months? If I don't have an internship set up by mid-June, I don't think I'm likely to get one, so let's say late June maybe. April, exams are in May, June. Alright. I can work with that.

Today while I was walking to the campus, I listened to some episodes of the ACCA student podcast, including one episode on Clever Job Hunting which I listened to more carefully than the others. One of the things it says is about networking - that it's important to build relationships up before bringing up jobs at all.

Well, there's the kick, isn't it? Don't look desperate, ever, especially when you feel desperate. Don't ask people for awkward things. Smile. Shake hands. Talk small. Make friends.

I've never been good at that. I hate feeling like I'm confined to safe, inoffensive subjects. And I'm quick to get annoyed with people's bad habits. I have to admit, though, I get it. Swooping in and expecting the attention of people who don't know what makes me great looks pretentious, entitled. Because it is. I fly around the world, leaving places and people behind me, looking for a break... And then who's there to help me or vouch for me?

Anyway. Book a ticket to leave in June, then. Get through the rest of my classes and exams. Shift emphasis away from menial work for the summer - it seems even mushroom harvesting positions are looking for people who intend to stay longer than a year. Keep throwing out applications as I can bear to for internships, try to learn about companies that might be a gateway for me, here or in Canada. Maybe look into the US a bit, but since I've no claim there and no degree so far, don't expend too much effort on it.

Wrap up the story of the tabletop campaign. Does everything just go to hell because the death of Isabet Carol was only the first sign of things going very, very wrong, and the PCs didn't actually investigate enough to stop it? Sounds plausible, and may offer them enough closure to satisfy. It would be nice to have a tabletop story actually end in a way that feels like an ending for once.

Continue the conversation with Fanshawe and maybe other colleges in Canada, look at continued study... Maybe. I'm tired of going to school, though. Look for work in Canada, yes. If it's something that can get me starting to do work that aligns with my strengths and studies, great. If something that aligns with EA, even better.

Alright. Go and set it up, then, Serp.

Continuing On

"I feel like you imply to me that I'm wasting your time every time I ask a question, in class or outside of it."
"No, it's not that. It's just that we have a lot to cover and very little time to do it all."
"The way you say it upsets me every time."
"Ditto."
"Well, I'm sorry for my side of that."
"Me too. Let's begin again next day."
handshake

-Monday 24th, September

The term is now thoroughly underway, and I have been neglecting my blogging again. I have become acquainted with the chaplain on campus and one of the two counselors, who I am set to meet once a week. I have been feeling busy, with pressure from classes, homework, and financial stability; regular job searching has as usual been discouraging. My several runs of boldly introducing myself and dropping off CVs in person have yielded nothing so far and largely robbed me of the energy to continue making online applications to posted jobs.

I am seeking to break into freelancing, to work on my own terms, and maybe do some tutoring, even in IT Carlow itself. UpWork has rejected my application twice, though, perhaps negating the hearsay I had from a friend of a friend that the application process was pretty much a formality. Having taken ten tests on the site and scored above average on every one and in the top 10% on some, I feel indignant about this, and am wondering whether you have to already be an established freelancer for UpWork to want to support you.

The lecturer I had the above encounter with has been treating me with greater kindness and consideration since. In my Excel-based computer labs, I race ahead. In non-computer lab Management Accounting classes, I have begun to sometimes stop even processing through the problems. Vainly racing the lecturer's Excel with a hand calculator while my mind is crowded with her talking was growing very tiresome, and I feel confident I already get the idea by now. If I could find the time to do more practice on my own it would be great, but my time is mostly spent wondering how I'm ever going to juggle all of the things I need to do.

And then there is archery. It's the one club I've been going to reliably, learning form and stance and hearing encouraging words from the coach, who is acting as a better teacher than any of my lecturers, using effective repetition, class participation and good humour, much like my statistics lecturer back at Fanshawe did, to help us memorise the safety rules and terminology of the bow, adding a little every week. There is also a lot of waiting, since the beginners shoot only 4-6 at a time so that the coaches can observe us and correct mistakes, and the rest queue behind. I have begun to get to know the other left-handed archers; In archery, which hand you fire with depends on the dominance of your eye, not the regular dominance of your hand, and so someone who is a right-handed writer may be a left-handed archer. There are perhaps three right hand archers to each of us lefties, and we share the same line to shoot with a left-handed bow.

I enjoy archery, even though there's a lot of waiting. I have been challenging my social courage to chat to and get to know some of the other lefties. I had an amusing conversation with one young man yesterday who's in the first year of a software course going into cyber security. For the money, he said when I asked, and we talked about different countries and pronunciations, accents and languages. He wondered why out of all the countries in the world I would want to come to Ireland, and expressed a dislike of the Irish accent and disdain for the country in general. He was an interesting conversationalist, although as I said to him myself it seemed in some moments as though we were chatting across from different sides of the D&D alignment table. He laughed.

Between the talking and building my skills and the generally welcoming atmosphere... Well, probably more important than any of that is that when I am at archery club I feel a certain pseudo-obligation to leave school, work and busyness matters mostly aside and just be still for a while, focused almost entirely on other things, and that's just deeply refreshing.

I had an ongoing email conversation with someone who runs the campus's tabletop games club, suggesting some ways he could make his emails and Facebook messages more welcoming and less cynical. We met in person yesterday, and essentially he told me that he wasn't interested in spending the effort to improve his approach for this thing he was volunteering his time toward. I am proud of myself for continuing to speak animatedly but cheerfully with him until we parted ways, although I went away from it feeling stressed and perhaps on a verge of my social anxiety that I am a bit surprised I managed to cling to, and not tumble over. He did thank me for the feedback and admit to some surprise that the way I had rewritten a couple of his messages registered as so much more welcoming even to him.

Also yesterday, a couple of my friends introduced me to A Capella Science, with Entropic Time and Banting's Imparted Years, which has made my Song of the Day list. The single-voice a capella of the latter is a little harsh on the ears at first, but it really grew on me over time, and the arrangements are good.

I had better get moving. It is another school morning and I need to be at school in a little under an hour to book an appointment with the campus doctor to get a renewed prescription of my thyroid medicine. Oh. Also also, I picked up a bottle of apple cider vinegar, which was mentioned in my marketing class, and have begun trying to take a spoon of it every day like a medicine. I don't know how valid are its claims as a health tonic, and I feel a little self-conscious for following a trend like this, but I'll just give it a try, and see if it seems to do me any good.

Dear Memory: As Seasons Change and The Time Draws Near

My upcoming trip back to Ireland becomes more real week by week. It is less than a month away now, and begins to solidify, develop the practical gentle urgency of something I need to prepare for. I went out today, and bought a luggage to fit close to the maximum dimensions for an allowed carry-on luggage as permitted for my flight. The one I found at Talize that I decided to buy was missing a handle, but seems roomy and adaptible. Part of its length is collapsible with an extension zipper. It also has little wheels on the bottom, and I know well the value of being able to pull, not carry, wherever the ground permits. I have begun to sew on a new handle, made of a synthetic strap that I have among my collection of various potentially useful objects and materials.

It has been a while since I've done any sewing, although I had a stint of it a while back, before I got this summer job, and I look forward to finishing my backpack as well, before I finally go.

The job... The first genuine interview I got this summer led to a hire. I must have been doing something right, and that brings a little soft smile to my face, although I know it also took me some effort and stress before I got to that interview. I have been working in maintenance at the Boys & Girls Club of London, and my direct supervisor is often impressed with the thoroughness and care of the work I and my co-workers who are also summer student hires do. Even, sometimes, with the speed, although this is far less one of my strengths. I have had sore muscles and joints in at least one place almost constantly since I started - it is physical work, which I have not been used to in recent years; and involves a lot of crouching and bending, which is hard on my feet, and thighs, and knees. However, the staff there are friendly and diverse, encouraging and gentle. They remind me insistently to take breaks and I think they want to make sure I take care of myself, which it is hard to remember to do when I am focused on proving my worth - at work, I always am.

For the first week of July, distant memory, I went into the United States to visit with another friend from the internet, who has seemed to be quite smitten with me for some time, and has been a great source of comfort and companionship. It was a very pleasant week of luxury and relaxation. I was treated to a hotel and swimming and I suspect I would have been bought restaurant food every day I was there had I not pretty much insisted on showing my cooking chops - so one night, I made us sandwiches and then my host bought us a hotplate so that I could cook a jambalaya (a boxed meal that caught his eye when we were shopping) and a soup and a good meal of pasta.

My dear host also offered me the opportunity to take a new laptop with me when I left, which caught me thoroughly off-guard. He had bought it just to have for our time together, he explained to me, and would have returned it otherwise. Although it baffles my awkwardness about money and worthiness, and jarred against my pride clamorously, I accepted; my budget for the coming year is likely to be stretched as it is, and my old laptop is in awful shape, just kind of waiting for one last problem to make it actually unusable. It already has no useable battery (and cannot run at all without being constantly plugged in) and often stalls and threatens to crash when dealing with anything complicated.

My trip in July was romantic, and my relationship with the one who invited me there as well. It continues to be a strong and fond connection. I wish for you to understand that although it took me some time to be ready to open my heart again after losing you last summer, and losing you much more thoroughly in October... I have been able to. I want you to understand that this is not an indication that I do not care about you or am no longer fond of you. It is, however, part of the plan. I needed to let you go, in order to come back to you freely, and with the strength of independence. Forging new romantic connections again, once I was able, has been part of that, a small and vital part of letting you go. But they do not displace my promises, or my hopes. There is a throne somewhere in my heart, now perhaps a little dusty, for I have left it mostly alone for some time... that sits reserved for you, should you want it. I have set up my other relationships to be secondary, to give primacy to the potential of you. If the primacy of you does not come about, I will adjust. If you make clear that you do not want the throne, I will adjust. Offer that place to someone else, or destroy it and build something else.

I think of you only occasionally now, and I think of you as a feature of the future more than a feature of the past. I do not have much to think about you that I have not already covered, and I think I have settled into a reasonable comfort in waiting. I went very thoroughly over all this, emotionally and practically, earlier. I chose my strategy, now it only remains to carry it through, and this I can do quite simply.

It occured to me while I was taking a shower at some point, perhaps a week ago, perhaps two... that there had been a time that a former state of Serp was thoroughly obsessed with you, and that state of Serp had had little else in its focus than you, and what might be the best way to have the best chance to know you again, and to have all the good of your company. That Serp decided that in order to have the best chance, it must cease to be the obsessed Serp that it was, but make a plan to pursue you gently and without being obsessed, so that the future, non-obsessed Serp would not simply ignore you or fail to make any effort. And so my past self plotted, and felt, and dreamed, and wrote you letters here, burning out its passion and resigning itself to pass away, giving way gradually and by its own will to a different Serp with a very different state of mind.

It feels like a different person wrote those letters, a little. This Serp, this present I... I do not think it is obsessed. I do not think I am obsessed, but regard this whole adventure as just the way that things are going to go. In respect for my past self, and in accord with the arrangements and work already put into the plan, in acquiring an acceptance from another Irish school, a deposit from my father, committing to my landlord to leave. I do not feel all that romantic about it day by day, but from time to time I do think about the future and wonder what will happen, when I will actually meet you. What look will be on your face? What will you see when you look at me? Will you notice some differences right away? Will I seem calmer? Stronger? Thinner? Happier? The subtle changes that take place over months are rarely well observed by one who lives through them. They are rarely drastic enough to notice, and even when they are, the new way of things quickly becomes merely normal again. But perhaps you, old memory, will notice.

And so that I do not leave it out, because it is still part of the reason, I do come to Ireland in order to find out. In order to see you, and speak to you, and in order to answer the question of whether we can and will love one another again. Perhaps I will feel a wash of emotion as soon as I see you again, eye to eye in real time and real space. Perhaps I will remember my obsession and be again entangled. I think, however, that I will be able to resist becoming obsessed for a time, by being careful, so as to not overwhelm you or make myself a nuisance by being too attached if it is not reciprocated, or if it is not desired of me. It is not, now, a demand... as my past self insisted it should not be, and I think I am ready to fulfil that. It is not a need for you. It is an open question, one in which I remain interested and curious, and very much inclined to pursue. Will we love one another again? Shall I be your companion for some substantial amount of time? Will your life and my life fit together? Can we make them complimentary in a way that makes each of us stronger? Will you want to?

I remind myself, in a reflex, to imagine that the answer could be no. And I smile a little to myself, because I think I genuinely have managed to prepare to accept that gracefully, by reminding myself every time. It would be alright. It would be satisfactory. The question would still have been answered. Don't get me wrong, I expect it may be at least a little disappointing... But my cunning past self knew just what it wanted its strategy to be, and set it in motion and then lay down and passed peacefully into the past so that I could emerge as I am, as planned, and I have to say I am somewhat impressed with myself. I didn't realize I could do that.

I think I'm ready. I am prepared for long travel, and to face uncertainty with confidence and with ingredients gathered around me from which to forge all manner of alternate plans. I am ready to meet you and be rekindled as a lover, or embraced as a friend. An... old friend... I remember the words, and my mind is transported back to a grassy field, a gentle rise, a tense and tearful conversation. My eyes leak in sympathy with the past and I feel curious, and wistful, and I continue to think about the future, but note that there is still this possibility of being reminded vividly of the past, like a movie playing over again, known fondly and memorized.

I have begun to sell some of my things. Took a bunch of photos and made a bunch of listings the other day. It has demanded more organization from me, and I have done it. It is useful on its own anyway.

I knew it'd been some time since I wrote here. There are a good many things I struggle to make time for, in those moments when I have power and confidence enough to choose to do something, and then go ahead and do it. Rather than going through my life desperately from reassurance to reassurance like it sometimes feels like.

I have three weeks left at my summer job, and then another handful of days left to myself, and then a long, long travel back to the country where I met you, old memory. Since you will not be able to meet me the day I land, there is not really any need to plan the meeting in advance. I will take up the offer given me by my college and be transported to Carlow to begin to settle there, and then I will probably feel I have the right to speak to you more freely, for I will be there, and available at the expenditure of a few hours in transit. I breathe. I sigh. Until then, then, old memory. Heh. The reunion comes.

Dear Memory: Back and Forward

Good morning, Eoin. I've had a pretty crazy week. If I were to presume I were bipolar, I would conclude that I have begun to shift back into the manic side of my cycle. I have slept relatively little recently... Although, naturally, it doesn't help that yet again I am in a house where I have grown to resent some of my roommates, and just about every noise I hear from them, which frequently happens late at night.

On the upside, much of the effect comes from happier things. I am attending more of my classes now... Although, still not all of them. I have grown closer and more intimate with some new friends, and have done some batches of writing. A sequence of three posts here which were explicitly about rationality for once. I plan to repost them at LessWrong (I can do that, apparently; it's a community blog now, with many contributors). A short story, a little over 900 words, which captured an idea that I got caught up in my head while I was out walking. I have been out walking a lot again, too. That also feels good. I have been very happy with the success I had in capturing and conveying out the idea. I got a prettier story out of it than I expected. It's viscerally violent, and yet transhumanist and optimistic.

I joined a bunch more Discord servers, and have been actually spending some time discussing things with some people who confuse and intimidate me with their high standards and down-to-business modes of communicating. I have been managing to resist the temptation to stop and ask for reassurance that I'm actually wanted there. Partly because one of the most no-nonsense of the bunch told me frankly that I was too valuable to discard just because I was weird, and was also very open about being annoyed with me a couple of times. I haven't always understood why. But he's not making a habit of hiding it if he has an issue with me.

Besides that, I find myself thinking... If I were to ask, and he told me that I was appreciated and welcome, it probably wouldn't help me for very long. If he were to tell me I wasn't, or that it was a stretch, it wouldn't help me at all. It may simply be that he projects an attitude of such greater knowledge, and engrossed preoccupation with greater and more important affairs, that I find myself instinctively assuming that it would genuinely be a colossal waste of his time. Or perhaps, more accurately, I would expect him to find it annoying again and get another minor swat to the ego because I ought to know better. And I kind of do.

I still think it's still important I have friends I can be vulnerable with, away from this high-tension scene. And again... I do.

I finally submitted my college applications to five of the six ITs in Ireland that I had planned to. Just to wait for responses now, on that front.

I think of you often. I have often had trouble getting a half-hour of work into my applications, because facing the task brought you to mind as thoroughly as ever. I imagine singing duets with you. Dancing with you. Cooking with you. Walking with you. Do you know what I remembered, the other day?

When I first showed you my little facial expressions ice breaker game, and you decided to read your subjects first, and the first one was "OK Go". And I think I must have looked magnificently baffled. "What? I thought you were going first...?"
Do you remember it, Eoin? Ah, such fun and silly times.

In... about three hours, at 10 AM, I have a Law test to write. I actually spent a couple of hours studying for it, for once. Although, to be fair, we have a really good practice resource for this course, in the form of a bunch of content quizzes with questions of exactly the same sort as will be on the exam, which auto-grades itself and can be taken as many times as we might wish. We also get a single page of notes we're allowed to bring in with us. So I did all of the quizzes relevant to the content, and I took notes on all the questions I had a hard time remembering the right answers to, or got wrong the first time around, and the principles on which they were based.

I haven't slept, although I am tired. I might actually manage to get some rest for two of those three hours, and then more after the test. I tried laying down, but my back was stiff and sore and my mind not particularly conditioned for sleep. I had been searching through my paperwork, looking for documents relevant to filing my taxes... That may have had something to do with it. Or, then, perhaps it had less to do with that than some of the things I found that had nothing whatsoever to do with tax.

I still keep scribbed notes and poetry, and especially drawings, from many years ago, even some of the ones that just seem dumb to me at this point. I happened upon a piece of writing that wasn't fiction. It was a little bitter reminder of just how insane I've been, at my worst... the times when I felt myself and my control, slipping, slipping. If we do get back together, and I read you these blog posts... Remind me, sometime, to read you my notes from The Day Everything Changed. It is not a pretty story. It is not a proud story. But it is a true story. And I remember hearing you voice your fears to me once, when I was in one of the worse fits I ever had while I was with you, that you weren't good for me. That you might be making things worse.

I think, perhaps... you will not think so anymore, after I tell you a story, not from memory, but from a record written on the same day, and never edited or changed since, about how bad it really was, once, quite some time before I met you. And yet, still not really all that long ago. You cannot realize how far I've come, until you can see the depths where I've been. I have to admit that I had almost forgotten how very little time has passed, and how truly awful it used to be. The feeling of slipping, slipping... and being afraid, a kind of visceral, in-the-moment dread, that I might not be able to maintain control of my own actions. Not even in my usual fallback manner of shutting them down entirely.

It's amazing to me how far I've come, these past few years.

Dear Memory: Night Vale and Daytime Dreams

Dear memory...

I have been bingeing on Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the Sims, lately, as I have shifted into a state of rest and reluctance to apply myself to anything. However, and perhaps unusually, I am mostly enjoying the rest, and the opportunity to let my mind and body be comparatively still. Perhaps, I have been overextending myself recently, and it is important to allow myself a time to pull in on myself.

I think of you often. Night Vale reminds me of you... since, of course, you were the person who originally showed it to me. I am up to episode 74 now, and when I heard the announcement describing the dog park, repeated almost exactly word for word from the pilot, I went back and listened to part of the pilot again to confirm that it actually was almost exactly word for word.

I remembered hanging out in your bedroom. I remembered commenting that the segment featuring advice to parents while bringing their children to play in the scrublands had some very genuinely sensible advice in it. It felt strange to remember so vividly a thing that happened about three quarters of a year ago, but then... My memories of my time with you are vivid. More vivid than usual, and my memories and imaginings are usually... vivid. Emotional intensity, I am sure, has a significant amount to do with memory formation and retention. That which a person feels strongly about, in any way, their brain will register as important, and reinforce.

You have always been important to me.

I think of you much, recently.

I have had strange dreams, the past couple of days (I had four days off of school in a row, and started sleeping during the day again; I have been unable yet to stop sleeping during the day, and this has contributed to my recent retreat into myself). Twice in a row... I think... My dreams involved getting to know a person, and winding up lying with that person and kissing them. The person was not you. The person was different in each dream, and represented a real person that I recognize, and sort of know, and have sort of liked, but not someone at all close to me. A YouTuber I occasionally watch, and a classmate I never really talked to much, but had a slight crush on for a time.

It feels strange to have my dreams repeat themes so strongly like that. I miss kissing you. I miss kissing anyone, really. It's been quite some time since I have. None of the people I know that I would want to kiss and feel comfortable trying to do so are here in London with me. Perhaps the dreams are simply an expression of desiring that kind of physical contact again. And yet, there was something about both of them that seemed as though they were trying to retell the story of my meeting you, and becoming involved with you. In one case, I asked the dream-partner to let me have a moment to process my feelings, after I had somewhat unexpectedly wound up kissing him, and I thought about you. In my dream. And whether I was okay with this, given how much I still miss you.

I have been very passive lately, but aside from a sense of slightly concerned pressure about an assignment which is due in two days, I'm not worried or upset about it. I was working hard for the first few weeks of the term, and we really didn't get much of a winter break at all this year. It's been very tense and active at school since the strike ended three months ago. It seems I am well able to forgive and tolerate myself taking time off to just relax for a while. I believe with some quiet, non-dramatic confidence that I will be able to pick up and start working again, once it becomes necessary for me to do so to keep pace with the course and continue to perform at my high standards for myself.

When I listen to Welcome to Night Vale recently, I snarl and giggle more often and with slightly less care to ensure no-one is close by to notice. I feel fairly peaceful with my own acknowledged, adopted, personally delighted in creepiness. I feel happy about my friends, who know that it is part of me, and love me no less. I have one person in particular who tells me that they really value the fact that when they talk to me, some of the things I say reflect a darker side to the world that they don't notice until I point it out. But he appreciates being able to see it, like a shape on the other side of the water, behind the clearer reflection of his own light, his own experience, his own face. Enlightening, endarkening, as he says.

It is... beautiful... to have contexts available to me in which this tendency of mine; although it arises quite naturally out of my perspective, and simply sharing the way I see the world and what things mean to me; is acknowledged and appreciated as a service.

I miss you. I hope that you are well. I look forward hopefully and with quiet, distant excitement to the time when I can speak to you again.

Christmas Crash

After my last post here, I decided to look back a ways and revisit what my feelings had been in November, when I was just setting up my resolution to return to Ireland. I was a little shaken to see how uncertain I had been about how I might expect Eoin to feel, and how much more confident it seemed that I had become.

Of course, I have been careful to avoid developing any sort of certainty that I would be welcomed, and every time I think or speak on it, I at least pay some lip service to the possibility that for some reason or another I would not be welcomed back. But by often envisioning him hugging or kissing me, by remembering his smile and his affection, I think I have further reinforced the notion to myself that I will be greeted with love of some kind.

Upon observing the distinct change in my confidence, a crumbling came on me that was probably well due. I had been working hard, catching up and keeping up with my schoolwork in one thing or another, for a solid stretch and I was tired. My spirits had been flagging uncertainly, waiting for the fall for some time, but I kept pulling them up again. This observation, though, and an opportunity to doubt and wonder if all my confidence had been built up by self-conditioning and wishful thinking, was just the slip I needed, and the fall came.

However, as these things go, I will say it was short. I spent almost all of a day in bed or idling, watching YouTube videos to fill mental space with noise, sleeping in frequent bursts. The next day, I reached out to my friends, although wretchedly and in an awful conflict, grumpy from social neglect and fatigue, feeling the stresses of ancient habits of self-doubt and deprecation bending but not entirely broken. I was surly and rude and plaintive to those who took the time to listen, but...

Throughout it, I acknowledged that I was in a crash at the end of a long streak of positivity. I spoke through all of my feelings and complaints over everything from my doubts about Eoin to procrastination of tasks I found intimidating or dull to feeling fatter than usual, but at every point I spoke of feelings and imaginings, and did not say that any great flaw I saw in myself was fact. I managed some gruff apologies and excuses to those friends I leant on. I held my tongue for vital moments some moments, and pointedly avoided some opportunities to pick fights even though I had to wrestle with my impulses and irritability to do so.

I was invited to play Jackbox 4 games by one of my dear old friends and enjoyed them, although the way we played over stream and without voice chat was less intimate than I used to enjoy from Jackbox games and had an irritating delay. Still, being welcomed into the fold for social fun was something I acknowledged that I badly needed, and had gone too long without.

I did not expect anything for Christmas, and did not get much. One friend bought me a game soundtrack that I had put on my wishlist at some point. I was happy to have been thought of with such a gesture, and made a point of saying so and giving my thanks.

With the patient ear of one friend, some friendly invitations and thoughts from others, and the vital acknowledgement that although not perfect, my judgement in times of happy optimism is probably better than when I am breaking down with doubt and fear; that so long as I do not presume to be infallible, sustaining my spirits on a reasonable hope is a fair and fine way of carrying on, I recovered fairly quickly. This morning, I woke and got back to some schoolwork pretty much first thing. In the early afternoon, I made a point of going outside just for the sake of my health.

Having come back here to write, although I have paused uncertainly many times, will be the last thing on my list of things I have set myself a duty to do today. Having done this, I will be free to relax, or to work up the courage to do something a little more intimidating, like returning for a brief refresher to my JavaScript lessons, or working on my resume to send to companies that might be my key to get back to Ireland. Ah... Breathe, Serp, breathe. It is still intimidating, that. Taking a solid step toward a desperate goal usually is, I think.

Term Hectic

Life has been a combination whirlwind and sinkhole for me recently.
I only just noticed I had not blogged in over a month. It's really no wonder that during the school months, I neglected it last year. I have my courses to handle, and right now assignments are getting on top of me. I have arrangements for my foreign exchange term to make, including lodging, furniture storage, finance and course selection. I have my primary and secondary relationships to juggle. A good problem to have, admittedly, but trying to stay sane while negotiating fights with one and jealousy with the other has been very draining.
In amongst all this, the biggest thing is trying to cope with my mood, my intense cravings for sleep, my utter not-willing-to-put-up-with-this feelings about the tumbling and crashing that keeps me from sleeping during any of the hours that the landlord and his family upstairs are awake (I'm so glad I'm moving at the beginning of December - oh, right, add that to the list of things I need to do and prepare for!). The schoolwork would not actually be much to get through if I could maintain my morale and just sit down and do 'em, but between exhaustion and exasperation, loneliness and pressure, it's a lot to manage and can easily leave me dazed and unproductive.
I'll get through it somehow or another. I have to, after all. I look forward to Ireland and the new term, after the arrangements and preparations and moving is all over. A new beginning, new lessons, a new setting. Europe! And when I come back, seeing Asha again in the summer months.
Well, why not dream far ahead, I suppose, right?

Dear Diary... I Quit!

After my vacation... Nothing seemed any better at work. I was just as disillusioned, cynical, sick of it, as before, and more so. There was another incident with one of my supervisors... I think I have largely managed not to speak of those here, though I thought about it. Simply put, two of the supervisors I work under have repeatedly treated me and spoken to me with disrespect I am just not willing to put up with... From the tasks I am assigned to and when, to how they respond if ever I question anything they've done.

Not long before my vacation, for example, I got a face full of really bad attitude just for asking, and trying to do it politely, where my supervisor had been, as I had not managed to catch sight of her on the sales floor for the past twenty minutes. I am not claiming necessarily that she was not there; I focus on my work while I am working, and people can sometimes come and go without me noticing them, but there was a point when I was looking for her actively, to deal with something that required a supervisor, and could not find her. I got no answer, just assertions that she knew what she was doing, for my information. Of course, the problem was that I didn't. Know what she was doing, that is. Or where she could be found.

This example is on the extreme end, but archetypal. I have brought up my issues with management before... The result tended to be that some meeting was had, behavior improved for about two weeks, and then everything slowly returned to the way it had been, disrespect included.

This has not been the only problem I've had with my job, that's made me more and more irritable with work since last September, but it's one of the easiest ones to remember and brood over, and after the newest incident, which I will not detail here, I decided I had had too much already, and was not prepared to take any more.

So I came in on a day I was not working for a meeting with the management. I asked to be placed in the processing room instead of in sales, exclusively and as soon as possible. Several days later when the head manager was available to talk to me, she explained to me politely why she would be unable to transfer me exclusively as I had requested. And I responded by stating politely that I would like to officially resign from my position. I had a resignation letter penned, signed, dated and in her mailbox the same day.

I have worked two shifts since then. After all, it's legal imperative and good form to give two weeks notice before actually leaving. Those two days, I've had a lightness in my step and a glee in my heart. Several customers have commented on my excellent customer service, and one even bought me a coffee. I am very glad to be leaving.

Funnily enough, both of my problem supervisors reacted with shock when I told them I was quitting, and almost immediately asked, "But why?". I kept diplomatically silent or evasive. I'm escaping from my troubles there, no need to make a scene and make enemies. It's not as though it's a secret that I've had troubles with them, but my experiences have told me that they don't accept or listen to direct criticism, so it doesn't seem there's any point in confronting them. It would be a waste of my time and energy.

Instead, I've been fantasizing and dreaming in my head about business ideas I would love to bring to fruition, and how. I don't actually think about college itself that much yet; I'm sure I will as September gets closer. I hope I will keep dreaming and fantasizing and fleshing out my plans, though, up until college and all the way through it. My studies should teach me enough practical skills to get those dreams started. I will likely begin some of the early steps while I am schooling. I look forward to it, and again and again I repeat to myself how much more skilled and more competent I've become. I don't have to put up with disrespect or answer to bosses who won't answer to me. I could find a better place to work, but I think I'd rather make one. I am already reading books that should help me.

The plot is afoot.

Validate Me Please

Have I been born or at some point rendered unable to detect an important tell between incredulity expressed out of pure and simple confusion, and incredulity expressed out of anger; frustration; exasperation?

Is there not a valid associative tie between incredulity and annoyance, then? I've seen a correlation too often for that to seem right.
It may have been emphasized harmfully by Mother.

Could Mother really be innocent after all, my understanding of her passive aggression false? No, I doubt it. There is some burden of responsibility that a mother should bear the brunt of maturity for with her child. That a lover should not have to bear the brunt of maturity for with a lover.
What, exactly?

I have felt a desperate need for, and lack of, validation for my interpretations of social interactions all my life. Having thought about that for a moment, yes, I believe all my life within useful memory.

Where is the sense that the validity of interpretation is to be assumed supposed to come from? Certainly, with my upbringing, it was undermined if not entirely destroyed. If I were to be allowed to assume that my interpretations were valid, Mother would have allowed me to defend myself from her passive-aggressiveness with logic. Which of course I did anyway, but it was continually invalidated at the point of my observations so that no argument I made could stick to her.
Narcissist. What have you done to me.

So I crave explicit validation of my interpretations as at least reasonable or understandable, and I crave it constantly. I become anxious and aggravated if it is not present and I begin to feel doubt.
What has this to do with incredulity? Mother often spoke to me in incredulous tones. From her, it seemed to mean that I was an unbelievably bad child. That my inconsideration and selfishness were so great that it was almost inconceivable I even existed. And so when she was angry at me, she would shout at me incredulously. How dare I question the love she undeniably had, while she complained at every juncture of what I was costing her and how much trouble I was that she put up with, and no matter how hard I hurt and raged and explained, trying to make her understand that she was hurting me, she never stepped down. Not once. Because she loved me, clearly.

So incredulity became the badge of "you horrid thing", to not back down became the abuse I was most used to, and letting me have my way became the golden grail I sought that represented the love I never got at home?

Perhaps, but of course I left home horribly twisted, and did not get my way often.

Things to learn and clarify:

To let me get my way is not what loving me is.
One can love me and not let me get away with shit.
One can not love me and let me get my way.
I know this, but the assumed lie may still be deeply ingrained in my emotional responses, moreso than for most.

Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
Confusion is not inherently condemnation.
There are things someone may not understand about me other than how horrible I am.
An unfortunate number of people have the bad habit, but not everyone thinks something is bad just because they don't understand it.

What else?
The validity of my interpretations is assumed to be present, not absent, where no remark of it is made.
Gods, it's going to be a nightmare to reverse engineer that one. Geesus.

A Shot of Proactivity

Hi, dear blahgh.

I did a lot yesterday. I've been doing a lot. I had my troublesome top tooth out, it was a premolar. I've been getting some nasty ache while it heals which sometimes reaches all the way up to just under my eye, probably due to the fact that the cavity in the root opened up an infection right against, or possibly in, some of the lowest part of my sinuses.

I got a referral and went for a psych evaluation. The psychiatrist said that my triggered mental images of being stabbed or otherwise hurt with almost any particularly scary object I see was OCD. It's what he said; not might be, was. I personally am not sure how much confidence to have in his apparent confidence, but I've just started taking the mind medicine he prescribed me. And holy hell is it ever bitter. For now I'm going to presume that means it would be dangerous to take too much of it, so they did their best to make sure no-one would want to. I'm being started on a quarter tablet, then half. I should be taking whole tablets daily within two weeks.

My roommate's Australian girlfriend is visiting and she is awesome. She cleans. She cleaned his room, she cleaned the kitchen. I helped her clean a box full of dishes from the place he and Robbit used to share. Then, because Robby was feeling tired and lazy and I would have been bored walking by myself, she went with me to the drugstore to pick up my prescription for mind meds, and we stopped in to get gardening supplies, which I've been meaning to pick up, and groceries.

Gardening is something I've been really wanting to try for a while, and I'm very excited about it! I planted seven trays of ten spots in those little pre-planting seedling trays made of decomposing cardboard, so you just tear them apart and replant them outside without having to take them out of their potlets. All cucumbers and lettuce, since those were the seed packets I had that suggested pre-planting in the instructions on the back. I'll be trying to follow the instructions as much as possible, because I'm very new to this and I know I don't really know what I'm doing, despite having helped my mom and dad in the garden sometimes while growing up. I'm sure what limited knowledge I do have will be useful, though. I really look forward to having home-grown vegetables during the summer. I hope I can keep a garden somewhat maintained. I imagine having the reason to be outside should be good for me, too.

So anyway, yesterday was awesome in many ways, I got a lot done - I even tidied up my room and went through my shirts to get rid of some by donating them to the Goodwill store I work at. I really do have more than enough clothes, so I got rid of anything that I probably wouldn't wear, either because it's not as comfortable as other options I have, or because it's too high-cut and shows my belly-button if I lift my arms - not that I have anything against that kind of shirt, but I can't wear them at work, and I rarely dress up to go other places, and I have no problem wearing longer shirts when I go out to other places anyway. I didn't toss all my high-cut shirts, but I did pass on a few. A lot of my clothes probably won't be good enough to go out on the sales floor, but I know that the "salvage" they get there (what isn't up to quality standards) goes to do some good too, so I'm sure they'll be able to do more with it than I was.

I was so energized last night due to my good mood that I stayed up late just because I wasn't tired. And then, unfortunately, I was woken up very early by my roommate packing his lunches into tupperwares. It sounded exactly like a kitten chasing the lid to a tupperware container around the kitchen floor, with a lot of scraping and sliding sounds. I'm going to ask him to try to do that in the evening, now that he's working morning shifts and is home earlier than 11:30 at night, so that I don't get woken up that way again.

Roommate's girlfriend is staying with us during weekdays for two weeks. I hope that I can continue to use her energy to spark my own. Maybe I can help my boyfriend out by stealing his bedding and insisting on washing it. He won't do it himself, but I really think that the mess he voluntarily lives in can't be good for him. Maybe I should be more like her, and clean his room like she cleaned our roommate's. I hadn't thought about it this way, but I may be neglecting Robby by allowing him to neglect himself when we both know he's in a rut.

For now, excitement abounds! Thanks for reading, and may you be inspired to make progress in your own lives as I am being inspired to do in mine.

Indomitable

My feet are still recovering from the intense soreness of wearing unaccustomed shoes for six hours, most of it spent walking at work and walking home from work. My boyfriend was laid off yesterday and I have no idea whether our rental application for the house we want to live in together will be approved in light of this. I'm not sure whether my own job with Goodwill will end with my end of probation assessment like Robby's did, or continue. And yet. I'm smiling today.

I was smiling even before I got online and discovered that the solo play-by-post D&D game I've been participating in for two years on and off has reached a head in the most awesome of ways. I was smiling while I was walking home noticing that the seam in the left side of my left shoe was starting to hurt my flesh and thinking to myself I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I took it off to see blood there.

Somehow, this time of trials is only waking me up and making me feel strong and ready for the adventure. I have faced worse than this, and I will face this too. I will be there for Robby and help him find work again. I will support us in the interim, whether we have to look for a different place from the one we were hoping for or not. Even if I lose my own job... I'll find another one. The stakes are high. The race is staggering. The stage is set...

And I am afraid...

And I will be victorious.

Life Is Good

Good day, bloggers.

I really, really mean that.

Sorry I've not been in touch, life is pretty awesomely hectic. Let's see if I can fill you in with some brevity. Robby the rabbit boy is still around and still a source of great comfort and warm, easy, peaceful love that makes a lot of traditional notions much more attractive... Not that they weren't already, but it's more profound.

Perhaps more surprisingly, Pup's around again too. I didn't talk to him for a whole month... Then I broke the silence, and returned to find a puppy boy grateful and overwhelmed with good feelings to hear my voice and see my face again. For the two weeks previous, he'd been getting help changing some of his more difficult behaviors from a shockingly delightful lady who showed up on FetLife out of absolutely nowhere to flirt with me and ask about playing with me. I wasn't really interested, partly because of the recent chaos with Pup, so she found his page and asked me if she could play with him. I was only too glad to encourage her to do so with my highest blessings and deep gratitude. While I'd given up the Pup as a lost cause for me, I really wanted him to get through the grief I knew it would cause him breaking up with me and was incredibly grateful to have someone show up who seemed very much his type and who would probably do great things to soothe the pain, if only by being a very pleasant distraction who understood.

She surprised me. Not only did she enjoy him in ways I have no doubt he enjoyed quite a lot himself, she took on the task of training him according to his own desires to become a person who would be less trouble for me if I ever did come back. She's helped him, for his sake and mine, to be less argumentative, to stop and ask before going off on long tangents or trying to share all the neat things he wants to share with me... And, with an incredible cunning that blew me away when I heard of it, also came up with a way to give him some training in pitch recognition and at the same time, much more importantly, subject him to exposure therapy to force him to face and learn to deal with jealousy. In a way that he will accept, despite all its unpleasantness. She is a fucking genius, and I don't know what kind spirit sent her our way, but may it receive resounding thanks for her presence.

I'm not spending a lot of time with Pup. But we've spoken a few times. It has been congenial and pleasant. My lost cause, somehow... in only a month... has been found again, and retrieved safely and whole from the jaws of panic and hopelessness and fits of not knowing how to deal with his jealousy...

I don't know what to say, but thank you, thank you, thank you, and if I somehow deserve all this, I abso-fucking-lutely love who I am as a person on that count alone.

It doesn't stop there. For the past two weeks, I've been employed. I'm working part time, a minimum of 15-20 hours a week, with Goodwill retail here in London. And it's great. I'm primarily a stocker and unstocker, but I also clean the kitchens and staff bathrooms, since the new manager offered extra hours to someone willing to keep those areas clean, and housekeeping is my background. I had even been doing some independent work cleaning someone's bathrooms from time to time in the preceding few months. Serendipity to be sure.

My job has me on my feet walking a lot, up to 7 or 8 hours in a day, so my feet are often tired and sore at the end of a shift. My arms get sore too when I have to stock or pull from high racks, as apparently there are muscles that my arms has never had much need to use before that I use a lot when I'm holding them above my head. That pain only lasts as long as I'm doing it, though, and I'm sure it will fade with time and exposure. I need new shoes I can put cushioned insoles in. I've been told those will certainly help with my feet.

I want to give deep thanks to Goodwill (the job help branch) for helping me get here, and to Goodwill (retail) for hiring me, and to Robby for helping me get through the higher powered job search with my head high and confidence showing, despite being in grief over Pup, and for many, many other wonderful things that make me very happy, very often. And of course I would like to thank our mysterious friend from FetLife for helping Puppy grow and change and become not a pain in the ass.

And to all my friends and readers who have helped, or who have only witnessed the drama of my life, and elected to care about it... Thank you as well. I love you all.

Singin' With My Sisters

Thursday is Music Jam day from 11 to noon at My Sister's Place. I'm not really there often, but I've been there and enjoyed the music a few times. I usually stand against a pillar and sing along, as everyone else does  sitting around the tables, while whoever's at the microphone sings and the accompanists play piano and/or ukulele...

Skill levels vary. Anyone's welcome to take the mic. I never have here before. I know I'm more than good enough that my singing would be enjoyed... but there's too much chance of choking or freezing up, either due to my social anxiety, or because I'm too touched by the song to keep my voice steady. It's a genuine risk with some tunes, especially Hallelujah.

Today, near the end of the session, I actually got up myself to sing a song. Yesterday, by the Beatles, one of a reasonable but small handful of songs in the Music Jam songbook that I know, and like, well enough to be interested in singing. It took a little steel, but wasn't as hard as it might have been, and much like playing piano, I got a fair few compliments afterward. No complaints. This time, anyway. Someone who had been trying to get me to sing gave me a double thumbs up from across the room, and I think I heard the pianist say through the crowd that I made her day. She did definitely mention that no-one sings that song, despite how beautiful it is, because the range is so broad it's almost inevitably either too high in the highest parts or too low in the lowest ones. It's true. I had to shift awkwardly between chest and head voice to sing it, but I remembered the tune and rhythm and enjoyed singing.

It was a little awkward also because I couldn't hear my voice coming through the speaker while I was behind the mic, so I couldn't tell how well it was coming through. Ah, well. What's important, and true, is that I stood up and took the mic for once rather than singing in the background behind someone else. It was... nice. And probably counts as something towards cognitive behavioral therapy, one of many steps to push my comfort levels and beat back anxiety one moment and one decision at a time.

I also got my hair trimmed and got a big load of laundry done while I was here today. Keeping things in order and modestly maintained... Things keep going. The haircut looks simple and flat-edged to me, but I trust it's not bad. The haircut lady was pleasant and polite, and it was nice being combed. She took care only to cut a little bit, just enough to clean up and get rid of the split ends, rather than shortening it significantly. My hair is still very long, and probably doesn't look that different. I hope the slight improvement in neatness will make me look a little more professional and neat.