"Yes, but yours is full of spiders"

 The primrose meeting gave me an opportunity to feel lonelier.  I'm not seeing the people I want to see, so somehow interacting with such a mixed back of people (a handful I'm fond of, a couple I dislike so much I have a hard time not spacing out when they speak and a double-handful of people to whom I'm indifferent).  And again, am I part of this community?  Almost certainly, or at least as much as I am a part of any community I am a part of this one.  Am I doing something I think is important?  Maybe?  Now that I've fallen down entirey on part of the work because it feels almost impossible to do in the current global situation

 

There's something about Colin Hay's voice that, no matter the lyrics, makes me wistful (okay, maybe not his Men at Work body of work, but everything else) .

 

Now that the steri-strips are off and enough of the skin has healed that I'm comfortable doing scar massage, I am routinely amazed at my own breasts.  Still in a way that they don't really feel entirely integrated into my sense-of-self, but much like a tattoo artist, my surgeon did art on me.  The outcome is so many worlds better than I could have dreamed.  Also, I really want to show off how little damage was done to the tattoo, and I'm sure Light is fine with my insisting he look at my boobs every day, but I want a wider audience.  Maybe not as wide an audience as when the original tattoo went a little bit viral on fetlife, but a wider than my current audience of one.

 

I really need to create a routine, I'm 100% failing at at managing any sort of day-to-day sameness.  I'm managing to do the basics, I wake up, I let the dog out, feed the beasts, drink my weird "serving of greens" thing I call my gross drink, eat breakfast, make tea, try to make a plan for the day.  And then it all falls apart.  I still manage to eat lunch and dinner, I'm stitching and journaling and reading almost every day, I'm going to try to institute daily dog walks, though I need Light on board for the part where I still can't control her.   But I also think it's time to commit to taking my pills and curling up in bed by 11, even if I'm still reading on my tablet.  

 

Finally bought myself a Rebel Deck, and started drawing cards from it today.  This one read -  "You = Tight Ass.   Loosen the fuck up.  Control freaks don't get laid."  So, there's that.  

 

I really, really miss hands and hips and I really, really don't want to go back to facebook even if I know hips posts a bunch there.  But I'm almost to the point where I'm going to propose some video chatting with people distant or only known on the internet.

 

Witchcraft class is talking about shadow work the need to recognize and work through negative self-talk.  and part of it is being healthy and accepting yourself is still a radical act,   And I know a lot of the things I tell myself, but I suspect there's a lot going on there under rocks I haven't turned over yet.    I'm too much, I take up too much space, I need to make myself smaller.  I have to be useful or people will leave.  I'm too nosy, too curious. I should be grateful for whatever attention I get. Eventually everyone's going to figure out I'm a fraud.   My therapist calls my self-talk my greek chorus, one that drowns out rational or healthy thought.   And I'm still half-convinced that the negative things I say to myself are the only way I stay an even half-good person, it's the way I make sure I stay empathetic, it's certainly the only way I get to the gym, it's the only way I make sure I'm not taking advantage of my partners.    ANd maybe some of this is true and some of it isn't, maybe they're crutches I needed at one point, maybe it helped at one point when I realized I'd been raised by emotional wolves and was essentially moderately feral.    And some of my negative self talk is just my brain trying to protect me in whatever limited ways it has access to.  

 

Speaking of wolves, I keep wondering if my reactions to the current situations are appropriate or proportional, if I'm over-concerned or under-concerned, or if I'm just always prepared for everything to go to shit on some level.

 

Someone in the witchcraft class today said "My therapist always says: we don’t judge what someone does in the middle of the storm. Anything you did to get out of the other side is to be honored as right. Interrogate what you want to keep after you’re on shore." and tomorrow I think I want to write about that some more.