"the tiniest sparks and the tenderest sounds"

We saw Hands and Hips yesterday, took Nonsense to Cat Rock where they met us and we got to show off how well Nonsense does off leash around people and other off leash dogs and how well she swims.  Met another pitty mix even smaller than Nonsense but just as heavy.    And I got to love on a handful of dogs and swoon with cuteness at even more.   (this had the side effect of me dreaming about Nonsense and Buckets being alive at the same time in our house and Buckets was totally the boss of Nonsense). 

 

Back to their house for fruit and cheese and bread and strawberry shortcake and bananagrams and boggle and a Dwayne The Rock Johnson movie (Skyscraper) and two dogs that were delighted to see us (and then later drugged to help with firework anxiety).

 

I think they'll probably be the only people I end up seeing this very long weekend, Delight et al are in PA visiting family and I kind of forget how to see if other people are around and I really want to cook for someone and play Arabian Nights.  I even asked Light to invite Boisterous over, but they are elsewhere too.   

 

Seriously, I don't want to sing the everything will be different at the new house song too too many times, but the idea of having a basement and a backyard to send Nonsense to so she can have all her Big Feelings about people is a little bit thrilling.   I think I'd like to cook for people again.  I'm pretty sure I did it a bunch in Northampton and even here sometimes and then I just stopped.  and I don't think it was Nonsense, I think it happened before then.  It may be related to being convinced my house always smells like cat pee now, and I think that happened two cats ago.

 

And I know I was just talking about how I had grown through the part where I wanted a lot of people in my life so I could distribute the load of dealing with me and I think that's still true, but there are board games that are more fun to play with more than three people and sometimes reasons to clean or cook or leave the house are easier when additional people are attached and I might be a wild raging introvert, but I'm still a semi-social one who longs for adult conversation sometimes.  

 

I've been reading a lot about ritual lately, and thinking that I need more of them in my life, to encourage me to do more of the things I want to do (like crafting and finding a god or god-analog) and more of the things I want to want to do (like the gym and meditating and taking a class) and I realize that I might also need to bring a sense of ritual to thing that I'm already doing.  

 

The thing that made me realize this is Spark. 

 

backstory: I'm one of my partners' nanny, sometimes quasi-coparent but that's way complicated to even try to say the word, much less think about the concept.

 

They've recently moved, and every addition to the house feels like it's pushing me farther away.  And I get it's because when I started to get to know Delight, their house had been occupied by them for a while and it was part of the scenery.   And I get these are feelings, and come from places other than reality, and I get that I don't contribute to their household in any way but labor and I know cohabitating partners are very different from noncohabitating partners.   Basically I know all the things, but struggle with the feels.

 

Many days, Delight works and comes home exhausted at 5. and I've mostly been talking to a 2yo all day and am maybe the tiniest bit starved for adult conversation.  This doubles down because I miss Delight wildly, and because I pretty much think they're the neatest person in the world and I want to spend lots of time with them.  But I'm also exhausted by 5, no matter how much I love Spark, watching her is still a lot of energy, both physically and emotionally.  And I want to go home and deal with my house and my pets and my other partners.

 

So at least twice a week,  I feel like the awkwardest person in awkward town, wanting to stay, wanting to leave, wanting to give Delight space with their kid so they can get on with their evening, which will also include their house and partner and pets, wantint to insert myself and absent myself all at once, and it leaves me with this unsatisfied feeling and I got home and it's a seven minute drive and I used to commute forty minutes minimum on a bus, which was dedicated reading time and I'm not giving myself dedicated reading time and that's a problem too. 

 

Hence ritual, and needing to pay attention to state changes.  

 

I feel like my therapy comes in three flavors.  One, I'm unengaged and more interested in intellectual conversation about how brains work.  Two, we're working through something immediately on fire or about to be on fire.  Three, we start somewhere in two and with breathtaking swiftness transition to me sobbing silently and making those guttural hiccuping noises in my throat and getting stuck on some thought and circling back to it over and over again while Julie gently reminds me to breathe, and that the things I think and the things I do were learned and can be unlearned.   Today's was something along the lines of my best never being good enough so it must not be my best.  Typing it out, that doesn't look that bad.  Applying it to things like how I cope with disaster and trauma means I'm failing in all possible directions and probably some nonpossible ones as well.

 

The fire we started talking about was next week's boob MRI.  We briefly touched on the idea that I think I have expended any credit that that particular trauma earned me and I should definitely no longer ever talk about anything mastectomy or menopause related ever again and definitely not where people could see it or have to deal with me dealing with it.   And in talking about that I realized I'm furious at myself because past-omnia lied to past-omnia when she said that one of the many good reasons for getting a mastectomy was no longer having to have mammograms and MRIs every six months, and past-omnia should have known that was a lie and never told it to herself, because it was false comfort which probably makes dealing with this MRI harder than if I had realized there would always be more MRIs, that I'm probably going to outlive these implants and that will require more surgical interventions. 

 

Blessedly, I remembered to wash my face immediately after so I didn't do the thing where I'm mysteriously itchy and my face feels tight around 4pm because it's still covered in salt.  But I need to hydrate more. both in general and right now.  I thought I was going to cross-stitch before bed, but this entry ended up taking more time and more brain than originally intended.  (I also wrote the June wrapup, but will save that for tomorrow and whatever I write tomorrow can be buffer.  (and will probably be about ritual and the book Becoming Dangerous).  I'm going to live that wild life and post without proofing for grammar or coherency so I can head in the direction of bed.