"Everybody knows the things she does to please"

Day four.

This is the new better that I was waiting to feel. 

I think I have to believe this.   It's not the state to which I wanted/hoped to return, but Πάντα ῥεῖ and maybe given enough time and assistance, I can build something just as good but different.  Maybe if I just focus on that, I can start ignoring this strange nauseated and empty feeling in my stomach, this feeling of loss, this sick, shocked feeling, like I've been falling down emotional stairs and sit at the bottom, gasping and evaluating how much damage this time.
 

I've been having wonderful skype dates with Abundance.   He's read to me, we spent an hour browsing tarot cards on pinterest and talking about them, he's spent a while trying to explain a programming concept, and then there's some just staring fondly at each other.   It's sweet and possibly a little syrupy and it makes me feel all warm and gooey and safe.    And sometimes I can keep that in mind when I go to sleep. 
 

And sometimes the bottom falls out, and then I get eaten up in unfun ways, and I try to tell myself not to think about the bad things but I start wondering what I should and shouldn't trust, what I actually know about myself, what I actually know about anyone, whether or not I'm seeing the world as it is.  bad things might be happening right now, and i've proven I can't sense them, can't head them off and somehow that leads to the conclusion that every silence is because someone is trying to figure out how to break bad news to me, to tell me how unimportant I actually am.    And maybe the only way out is through, and so I start to wallow and dig down deep and try to figure out what I'm afraid of, but the going is slow and murky and now I'm trying to do it while off-balance and constrained in ways I don't even understand.
 

My mother always told me not to think about things that upset me, and the nature of our relationship meant that I thought that was stupid advice, and tried to never, ever take it.   and so I allow myself almost no comfort, and certainly not the comfort of ignoring something I don't want to think about.   (see also: good reasons to drink)
 

And maybe the only way to endure this is to make myself deliberately short-sighted, not live in the multitude of ugly futures I can imagine for myself.   I told delight "Well, now I've at least cobbled together an identity that isn't entirely what I've managed to figure out about what people want me to be."   And she of course asked me if it was who i wanted to be, and I don't know, because all the answers seem to boil down to me crying and wanting to be good enough and knowing I never, ever will be.

(The logical question of course is good enough for what, but I can't get that far yet)

Despite the above text, I'm in a mostly okay place.  I went and saw Ouija with my flamboyant new coworker (he has shiny skulls decorating his desk).   I talked to SSG for a long time this afternoon and she really helped, I made plans with two other people (assuming light's plague gets better not worse).  I removed 100 emails from my work inbox, confessed to my boss that I'd been working more than 20hrs a week and was appropriately scolded and told to contemplate if I wanted money or more time off and then take steps to get that. (steps = tell her) and now I'm home and dry and there's cocoa on the horizon and the dog is snoring.