Today today

I woke up at 9:30 the morning. Had gone to bed around 11:30- or midnight. I haven't been sleeping well, but can't point to anything wrong. I just wake up not feeling refreshed. Those morning hours don't feel like they matter, like I'm on the edge of sleep and wake, and gaining the benefits of neither.

I wish I were dreaming more. Wish I was experiencing the kinds of dreams that tell me things.

This morning I watched tarot videos and tried to plot out the day. I keep getting angry and arguing in the morning, it's not like it was, but its sort of on repeat. Its my mind's basic go-to move when I have nothing personal to contemplate, when everything is going fine, I have no drama or love, and it is all inline with the way things have been, generally trending well (personally). But without a connection, is anything real?  A beautiful experience. No one to share it with.

I went for a walk with my Dad and Steve. I ended up calling Steve out on the way he was treating his friend, and not owning his own feelings. It wasn't meant to be harsh, but the way that he was talking about the situation was just too self centered, and yet he was blaming his friend for it.

I realized while I was doing it that this is how I have been reacting lately internally to thoughts of M, going back to the idea of her being narcissistic and me being the victim  -meanwhile the way she seemed to be perceiving it was that she was the victim...  and this dynamic does nothing for either of us.   So I've been trying to remind myself of my own responsibilities, my own reactions, my choices in responding to difficult feelings, and owning the way I have done so many of the same things she did to me. That actually, we are all hiding and self protecting, doing everything in our power to not admit how powerless we feel, how ashamed, how guilty, how abandoned.

I am that.

Steve is that. I felt bad for calling him out, but I also felt like the way he was talking would never get him or his friend anywhere. It would leave him feeling taken advantage of, and his friend abandoned.
Neither benefit from that twist. Better to acknowledge the hurt, better to take responsibility for it.

I've been thinking a lot about this because the last few days of the abundance challenge were really helpful and also difficult. I still haven't completed it.

One of them was to write a letter to someone.
Another was just to take stock, take responsibility, and own the idea of abundance.
It's easy for me to want to move forward. But am I ready?

This afternoon, I spent 2 hours on a video chat with the White Fragility book club from the UU church. Half the group is older white women who are wrestling with these questions for the first time. The two people I relate to the most are a jewish woman and a woman who identifies as queer. The others, though they are social workers and what not, just remind me of the problem. I should be teaching this kind of stuff, not participating. It is too beginning level. These folks have been wrestling with it for just a few years. BUT, it was actually a lot of fun. I found myself emphatically nodding along. I found myself smiling. I found myself wrestling just a bit, wondering how to phrase things, getting caught off guard by my lack of vocabulary in the moment.

Afterwards I made some salmon and ate too many oreos.
I found myself on facebook and snooping. A new picture or two.
She was baking for N (grief), she was sitting on a deck I didn't recognize.
I am pretty sure she moved. I had always wondered how she'd be able to stay in that apartment that must have reminded her of me. I can't even drive through St. Paul without being overwhelmed, how could you stay in those halls and not see me in the door way? Cook in the kitchen and not see me waiting at the counter? It makes sense. I wish her well, even in my jealousy and hurt.  And its still there, but I move through it much quicker than I used to.

I tried to start up the abundance journaling that I'd put off, but it wasn't resonating, I felt heavy and achy, I fell asleep.

I went to my bed. I set an alarm. I tried to take an hour, but instead began thinking of the little lies one of my clients shares, and how they put up walls between him and other people. How they distort reality, and make it harder for people to believe him. And then he wonders why he is all alone, and hates everyone -Which is what I was thinking about M this morning in the shower- to be surrounded by people who want to love you, but you distort the picture so much that you still feel alone all the time. It's tragic. And yet, I feel like I can recognize it easier now, and I hope I can help my client recognize and change things before it becomes a life time of this.  (Sometimes I feel like the relationship really helped me with these students).

I was sitting there, halfway between sleep and wake, and thinking about why those pictures were hard, and recognized that again, I had pictured myself in these futures. Pictured myself making N breakfast, buying the groceries for them, waiting with a cup of coffee while she made stuff for them, pictured them in their PJs running around. Sunday mornings. Pictured us moving to a new place together. Making a life together.
I sort of thought that it would end... the grief, its been easier since the birthdays. Those milestones that I had set in my mind, they came, they were each hard, and they passed. But now, I am still aware that they are moving on, and I am too. And as my therapist reminded me yesterday, some folks process (and love) on one or two levels, and we can appreciate them for that, even love them, but if we are processing and loving on 7 or 10 or 1000, then we maybe aren't the right fit.  She used to always say I was overthinking it, hard for her to comprehend more than a level of two of love, and I would always smile, and internally worry that she wasn't able to appreciate the beauty and complexity, and that that would keep us apart.
Halfway between dreams and wake, I suddenly felt her in my arms, my chin resting just a touch on her head. These things has been so satisfying to me once. Home.



Not sure how to end this:
Some part of me:
Wants a happy ending.
Wants to remind myself that I am learning and growing and will choose more wisely next time.
Wants to remind me that I have to keep up the walls.
Wants to remind me that I am dwelling on someone who left me 8 months ago, and who, didn't love me the way I loved her.
Wants to remind me that I did love her.
And I suppose some part of me is stalling because I don't know how to finish the abundance journal and don't want to do my paperwork for work tomorrow.

ha!


Unity. I am that.
We are all the same, shadows, reflections, differing timelines, they mean nothing, we are all love, bound by it, attached, connected, distraught, reactive, we push and pull, beat at ourselves and others, but we are bound up in it, one big goo pile with a trillion facets. A trillion dimensions. We couldn't do things differently no matter how we tried, we are a mirror reflecting, we are infinite possibilities enacted, and it is beautiful and horrible, and awe-full.