omnia_mutantur | Show up in shining colors

Sometimes, I just tell myself over and over again that even if I don't know what the other side looks like, I'll get to it.

Some of today's thought experiments/attempts at coping involved writing myself a lengthy essay first listing what I wanted to be feeling about Abundance dating and then listing what I think I am feeling about Abundance dating. I initially just tried to do the first part of the essay but found that the only way to get to a place where I could say straight-up positive things instead of getting defensive about why I wasn't feeling them was to promise myself that I could then talk about how I was feeling.

Paragraphs of emotions - the summary being - I want to feel excited for him, I want him to be a person he wants to be who can do the things important to him, I want to feel placid about my use of the time, I want recognize how much our relationship has grown, I want to recognize how much I've grown in how I handle conflict, I want to be curious about new parts of his life. And I want to feel so much delight about the mostly-stable domestic V arrangement I've got and how it expands.

And the big ones, trust and security, wanting to be certain that he comes back, being happy for him when he leaves and happy when he does come back just because I like to see him, not because I thought he wouldn't. I want to feel enough trust that I don't play out endless disaster scenarios, that I don't have to pre-emptively defend my endless borders, enough that I can believe he's not going to ask things of me that damage me.

We had a miscommunication, straight up believing that each other had said or heard something entirely different, the opportunity to be the first in his inflatable kayak was lost. I was heartbroken, he was apologetic, we tried to talk a bit about how to head it off in the future, but the hurt didn't go away after we did that and I forget what I'm supposed to do with the feelings then. I know how to make things more specific, if I can't be the first person he's in a relationship with in the tandem kayak, I can be the first one wearing his collar/bracelet when I do so.

The flip side of the essay was uglier, and harder to sum up. I feel mammoth-panicky, convinced something bad (a mammoth) is imminent and if I just look hard enough I'll see the mammoth, If there's no mammoth, it never means they're not there, it just means I'm failing to see them. I still worry about decisions I make in the throes of said sometimes inescapable panic, and I'm in the throes or throe-adjacent a lot more than usual and I know that's where I make bad decisions. The question of what to do when something feels unsustainable. How ugly my desire for fairness feels, and how if something feels unfair, someone else gets something that I did not, and the reason that happened was because I wasn't good enough then and probably am not good enough now. Anger and loss, my feelings might be past trauma not present trauma, but it's also a little bit like getting punched the face weekly, even if I set up the punching years ago. In this scenario, for me, it's still hard to appreciate the fist. Loss because time is finite and can only contain so many road trips and explorations.

So it keeps happening, I keep trying to walk the line of expressing my feelings instead of freezing up and trying not to ask for unreasonable things during those expression. Tears still feel manipulative, no matter how many or few I shed.

A UTI pushed my surgery a week, I'm going under the knife next Tuesday, and I can't imagine it'll make anything easier, but maybe on the other side, I can get back to at the very least my Fells. For now, lots of loud Mountain Goats songs and alarming all the beasts by trying to find the most comfortable position for my new adjustable bed.