feeling rough?

people have been feeling edgy. edge-y.

the good news is that it will pass. the bad news is that it probably won't pass fast enough. the real news is you don't give a shit about later, because now is hard.

i can't tell you anything you can't refute, even if i am right. that's how powerful our emotions can be. that's how we convince ourselves all kinds of things are true.

look around, you think you aren't fallible to all kinds of prey? physical predators, mental predators. external predators, internal predators. see those being preyed on around you? see how they tell you they're fine, tell you they can cope? sometimes we aren't fine. sometimes it's not worth coping, sure.

but even when we feel boxed into a corner, the show ain't over. if you think you only have one choice, i can guarantee you have forgotten something.

sometimes we want to see big change fast. sometimes we think we can't wait, it's not worth waiting or waiting won't change anything.

but who judges a party at eleven o'clock? stay until it's over. stay until four. stay until the cops shut it down or it ends in breakfast.

if you're having a bad time, i have several things to say to you:

- me too. sucks eh? ah well. i've got some things i want to do and while i'm trying, i'll drink some water and talk to you.

- yeah that happens sometimes.

- i know someone who was having a bad time and then figured out some of their needs and got some met (not all, but hey, they're still working on it) and now they feel better.

- tell me.



sometimes when i'm doing a sewing project, it gets all knotty. i get frustrated when that happens. i was working, and then some tiny twist of thread fucked it all up.

at these times, i am very tempted to quit. sometimes i want to burn the whole project.

if i am lucky, i take a deep breath, cut the string, tie it off and start over. it takes longer, but i get it done.

if i am feeling especially choked, maybe because it has happened several times or other things have frustrated me already, i have to leave the project, leave the room.

today that happened. i feel like it's some kind of conspiracy, like the threads are out to get me.i can hear their evil laughter.

when i am feeling persecuted, that's when i know there is something else at work in my brain. so i go upstairs, pour myself a glass of water, and express myself in some way that comes more easily. work it out of me.

i'm lucky today that this feels easy. some days, everything feels hard. some days i give up, and go watch tv. some days i do something that i know i can do, and then at least i can feel slightly proud of myself when i am done.

i'm not confessing or giving advice, i'm just talking to the people who feel edgy. i feel it too. 

...

my friend committed suicide monday night.

i had known her for about ten years. she gave good hugs. we shared long ones. she danced. brighid and i stayed with her when we went up to the city last winter. before that, i hadn't seen her since the summer, at a festival. she sat in hank with her cute blonde friend, and we all chatted.

when i stayed with her at her hobbit cottage, we sat up late one night and drank a bit of scotch, and talked. we talked about a lot of things, including depression. she spoke of how she had been traveling in her youth and got really, really sick. after that, she lived with depression. that's just the way it was. she tried a lot of things, and they would work for a bit, but then.

she was doing pretty well at the time, had a book that was reminding her. i forget the title but i can see it. i remember looking at the book, and it seemed familiar, like i had seen it years ago when i lived in cloud nine. i remember wondering if it would help me with my own depression.

she seemed optimistic. she seemed tired.

we wanted to play cribbage, but she couldn't find the board. she looked really hard, too. she was pretty focused on it. eventually we played just keeping score on paper.

i wonder who will take her three cats. 

irrational, love-soaked ravings

another post so quickly! praise the internet!

we are in charlottetown, PEI. the smallest province. it is very red. seriously, the soil is red. lots of oxidizing iron in the sandstone or something. tomorrow we are going to visit the sand dunes on the north shore. we're staying in the driveway of an old friend of mine from vancouver; she and i worked together as fundraisers, and became fast friends. we reunited, yes, via facebook, and it is so lovely to see her. eight years sometimes makes no difference at all. she is still her beautiful self and easy to talk to. also, another example of parenting, always handy. i asked her about breast-feeding, diaper choices, labour-division; the ongoing subjects i am turning over in my mind.

she is married to a nice man, with a very cute little boy who is not quite a year old. last night, the guys went for 'a guys night out' (apparently they went to some other guy's house, got drunk and talked about golf) while the two of us and a friend of hers stayed in and talked about relationships. gender, anyone? one subject was how babies affect relationships. her friend had recommended to her that the relationship needs to stay the priority, and my friend commented on the rightness of that statement. she said that when she remembered to keep her relationship the priority, everything else fell into place. making the baby the priority, it seems, takes up all your room for priorities.

she talked about how lucky she feels to be with her husband; another subject was abusive relationships, which seem to be some kind of evil theme lately. while i commented on how it seems to me to be these men whom i never would have predicted would be emotionally and/or physically abusive - these gentle, gentle men who have said to my friends things like "i just want to hit you" over and over, who have pushed them to the ground and blamed the woman's behaviour ("you're crazy, it was self-defence," because she was yelling at him), who have manipulated fights into being all her fault so they could avoid facing up to their own contribution to the problem, who have for years convinced these women that they deserved it, they are at fault for what someone else is doing to them, they prompt him to be violent.

my friend, she is stuck on how smart these women are who stay with abusive men, who go back to the man, who tell my friend this time he'll change because he has said he'll stop drinking, has said he will go through therapy, has talked with his mouth instead of his hands today. and maybe he will stop, but if he has hit you, don't you think he needs to prove that change before you move back in with your child? you have a masters in psychology and he's got you wrapped around his little finger.

the queen and i were talking this morning (well, this afternoon; we had a delicious sleep-in) and i commented on how i have left men for far less than the struggles he and i have faced. i have left men in the middle of roadtrips, resulting in me moving to other cities or hitchiking back across a province or two by myself, with very little money. i have left these men for less because i refused to be trapped by them, even if it was their vehicle i was travelling in. i refused to be the person with less power, and leaving them was my expression of my own power: you don't own me. they were so surprised.

but i am not leaving the queen. and it is not about what we suffer through; it is because i have committed. it was my decision. and it happened before the pregnancy; we had an epic fight and he tried to break up with me before i got pregnant; he was having trouble with my close relationships with some of my exes. i have never tried to talk anyone out of leaving a relationship with me; i understand, based on the previous paragraph, how important it is to respect someone's decision about their own liberty. but i talked him out of it. i sensed it was fear-based, i sensed that what he was afraid of wasn't true. i knew i would stay with him and be faithful, i knew those friendships were just friendships and the queen and i would get past this moment. there is more to be mined from this union, and i knew and know it. instead, i asked him to marry me.

and my decision to stay, it is not regardless of anything. there are dealbreakers: don't hit me, don't rape me, don't beat the children (my friend in pei says her list of dealbreakers includes born-again christianity; you find jesus, she says, and it's over). but i see how these women, especially the ones with children, how they stay in the face of adversity. they have committed. and when you commit, you commit to suffering. you don't walk away just because it gets difficult. so how do i make sure i don't stay in the face of something that takes away from my own personal well-being? other than honouring my dealbreakers (and really honouring them, not rationalizing that this was different, this wouldn't happen again) how do i find the balance?

the queen says it's a balance between commitment and rationality. but i find that commitment isn't terribly rational to begin with. look at our history as a species. making a monogamous commitment, even though i am perfectly happy doing so, flies in the face of recorded history. as a species, we are lousy at monogamy. i have always been at peace with this, never bothered trying too hard to keep anyone. but now i am taking it on. i am flexing my commitment muscles. and it feels good!

why the queen? he fascinates me. i like these parts of him, these reading, music-playing, thoughtful parts of him, these drinking, farming parts of him. i like how he isn't what he looks like, how he has these seemingly incongruous personality aspects (engine-grease-soaked farmboy who loves not just books but literature, man who loves cats and babies and respects his mother but can fight and cuss and get completely wasted, hard worker who will uncomplainingly work fifteen-hour days for weeks and then tell off a wankerish supervisor and quit on the spot; i could go on). i like how i understand him in the way that i don't take his behaviour personally, but not in the way that his reasons are transparent to me. he has depth.

in montreal, when we had our fight, his friend (brother of the awesomes) talked to me about the queen, talked to me about his childhood, asked me why i think he is so different from his brothers. i learned more about the queen that night and it made me want to keep learning. it made me love him more. it made me want to be gentler with him, and show him more of my love. this is new depth for me.

titillation, thou name is us!

had a wee potluck last night. 'twas lovely.

initially, i planned it in self-defence, not having enough time to visit with everyone. and i wasn't actually looking forward to it too terribly much, as larger gatherings aren't my favourite - i often get drunk just to get through it all. it's not terribly dysfunctional as i don't need to get drunk (as last night proved) but it sure is convenient since it's a social gathering, and alcohol is freely available. but it was really lovely, and i enjoyed myself (until the nausea and tiredness put me to bed).

last night i had one sip of johnny walker blue label, which is their highly debated, highly expensive, rare blended scotch whiskeys. it was wonderful and amazing. they don't put an age on it, and it changes from year to year. this was a good year. sadly, i later felt gross. sigh. one tiny sip. you think the kid could hold their scotch, being our kid and all.

before the booze turned everyone into apes, it was really nice. a variety of potluck items, a variety of my life represented (bookstore crowd; an old school friend; miz lovely of the lovelies, who teared up as she touched my belly; single moms and their kids; old roommates; someone from the non-profit i just quit; some friends of the queen; and, a nice cross-section of old hippies).

after the booze turned everyone into apes, there was much ribaldry. the good witch was celebrating her birthday three doors down (she caught a fair amount of people who weren't sure if this was my gathering or not) in a peaceful, folkish manner, and members of our gathering later went off to be drunk there. they came back rather subdued, clearly having been overwhelmed by the sobriety and bluegrass, much in the way that the british experienced when trying to take over india - "hey, we have all the brash loud powerful bigness, how come they just manage to swallow it, smile and keep being them?"

there were crass jokes and drunk blubberings, heavy flirtation and after i went to bed, wrestling! hot. cheers and shouts from around the fire, shouts between the houses, drunken stumblings and a tumble, and the fire burned late into the night. the next door neighbour just came in and was excited to find his necklace, which had been ripped off in the wrestling. he described the shenanigans as having been both ridiculous and exuberant.

the queen came to bed later and told me tales. most of them were really funny. i wish i could say they were all funny, but they weren't. i think one of our greatest failings as a pseudo-evolved species is our habit of forgetting how easily we can do stupid things. thankfully, it sounds like the stupid story the queen brought back was headed off at the pass by another community member. let a drunk chick lie, that's what i say. thank goddess we don't just share time and stories with each other, we share responsibility. "dude, you don't want to do this right now. come with me back to the fire. drink this water."

sexy kitchen fairies ran a load through the dishwasher, so the clean-up this morning was more interesting than a pain. the backyard booty consisted of various items of clothing, the usual empty glasses cans and bottles, and a random box with several snackpacks of nachos and a timothy leary book. the inside of the house yielded significant evidence of children and post-party strategically placed dishes. they're like easter eggs! on tiny shelves in the hallway, stacked on top of the toaster, rolling around on the floor near the futon and other places people passed out with a glass of water next to them...

of course the best part was none of this madness; the best part was catching up with these amazing people i know, people i have known since i was fourteen, eighteen, twenty-five. people who think about their lives, who wonder and weep and work hard. meaningful people. people i will miss. and yes, people who can seriously still rock out even though our median age is somewhere around thirty.

taking action. how?

awesome. a friend sent me this link of david bowie playing with his phenomenal bass player, gail ann dorsey. i have this song already, but the visuals, watching her rock out, watching them rock out together... it made me actually look up the lyrics to "under pressure". i find them to be an amazing human expression: that endlessly repeating occasion of figuring out how fucked up the world is; knowing you need to act, not knowing how, not knowing what will work, feeling the frustration and the urgency mount, plateau, never be replaced by a real sense of certainty.

i don't ever feel envious of fanatics, but i sense that desire to feel certain. to know what to do would be to feel empowered. i know a lot of what not to do, i know how to behave. but how to reach out and touch all the damage that is about to happen? all the heads of the monster that will grow back each time we chop off another head? no one knows what to do about that. but

"It's the terror of knowing
What this world is about
Watching some good friends
Screaming 'Let me out'
Pray tomorrow takes me higher
Pressure on people - people on streets
Turned away from it all like a blind man
Sat on a fence but it don't work
Keep coming up with love
but it's so slashed and torn
Why - why - why ?
Love love love love love
Insanity laughs under pressure we're cracking
Can't we give ourselves one more chance
Why can't we give love one more chance
Why can't we give love give love give love give love
give love give love give love give love give love
'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And loves dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves
Under pressure
Under pressure
Pressure"

sums up the feeling we're left with, always, somewhere. the residue.

tiny dribbles...

late august. aaaah.

i realized recently that i haven't been super happy. there's been stress, yes, and i am moving out of my house again. the job got really busy, and people keep quitting, so there is always someone new to train. the vibe at work is nice, but it was smokin busy for two weeks and we're all still recovering. the queen and i, well, i'll get to that. but anyway. stress. and i find that when i am feeling stressed, i tend to just try and plod on until it's over. but there tends to be stress that follows stress, maybe because a stressful situation leads to neglect for the ares of one's life that aren't on fire... which leads to those areas smoldering and then lighting up, then catching the curtains... sorry. anyway. stress, and my plodding through it. not a good thing.

so i am recognizing that i want to aim for a happier demeanour right away, instead of waiting until 'the right time' to feel better and relax. not put off feeling better because i am too tired.

today is my day off, and i have a list of things i want to do this month. i accomplished one task, took steps on two more, and got a fair amount of packing done. but i also did enjoyable things - ate gluten-free pizza with the wife, read most of the memoirs of two airline stewardesses from the sixties (light-hearted and fun, incredibly dated and heterosexist, and apparently kind of fake. perfect) and got some walking in.

the queen is down at the farm tonight (or off with a brother). we've been hanging out quite a lot lately, and i guess it's good to get some space in. being focused on all the stuff i want to get done is quite helpful. i've felt tired lately, and haven't been able to get as much done on my workdays. still, i've enjoyed time with the queen. he is such a lovely and loveable man. it's amazing how such grace and kindness can co-exist with a rough and tumble farmboy attitude (i think kittens are cute. he remembers drowning them).

i want to talk more about what's going on in my life and what the plans are for the winter, but i am ready to go to sleep. so i'll just set it up and leave you hanging.

north country fair

a plethora of tastes: some at the vendor's tents, some on the wind.

i had the strangest fair. i decided not to volunteer, thus being able to spend more time with the queen, who couldn't get a lot of time off work. we camped with the queen's friends way way back in the woods. i ended up hardly seeing my friends at all. basically, the whole structure of my fair changed. add to the changes that i wasn't drinking alcohol (i had one drink per day) and i was camped with some heavy drinkers. it all ended up being kind of weird when compared to pretty much any previous year. i didn't hit up the electronica stage at all, i wasn't backstage, i wasn't at über camp with the LED hippies...

we swam a lot, saw some pretty good bands (maria in the shower) and had a great tent spot way back in the woods, near the river. we fell in love with a thai hut that put love in their food, and sat on the net of a pirate ship to watch hank and lily. we saw eight deer on the way up, and four deer and a fox on the way back (the queen saw an eagle but i didn't catch it). when we swam upstream, further away from most of the folks, i saw a wonderful tiny frog. there were multiple colours of butterfly and the cutest bird with a nest in the grass near our tent - it kept trying to lure us away from its nest by running several feet away and squeaking loudly, like a muppet beep.

still, it was hard. i feel like i am going through a lot of changes, and i don't think i gave myself the support network that i needed. the queen's friends are lovely; some i have met several years ago. but they are his friends, not yet mine. i don't want to be vulnerable around them, which means i spent the whole weekend subtly on guard. the combination of that and the lack of seeing my own friends (i went by über camp several times but only caught brief connections with any of them - it was that weird festival thing where you can be looking for someone at the same time they are looking for you, and thus never see them at all) ended up with me feeling pretty lonely. the queen didn't drink as heavily as some of his friends, but he was still drinking, still on the party train, and i was not. and the thing that made all the difference was that i wanted to be on the party train too. but for some health reasons, it was important that i not do so.

on the last day, we had planned to stay an extra night and then leave really early so the queen could make it into work by noon. but most of his friends were leaving, and i was really tired, so i checked in on leaving early too. he consented, and we agreed to leave around six or seven. at that point, he went off to have a scotch-fueled mud fight, and i went in search of other connections. i wish i had found someone i could have talked to. i think that might have made a difference in the rest of my day. but i didn't. i found someone who had had a very traumatizing fair last year, and who needed to check in. so he checked in, and i helped him ground and uncrinkle. and then we parted ways. i went to visit a woman i know who was giving massage, because i had a wickedly brewing headache. but she was busy. so i went back to camp to lay down, and hopefully nap the headache away. i read for a bit on a blanket i laid in the shade of the car. i tried to nap but the headache got worse. the queen came back, and i checked in on leaving again. we were all packed up. he wanted to visit with his friends some more. a combination of feeling guilty (because his craziest friend wanted us to stay another night and get really wasted with him, and i wanted to go home, and the queen seemed torn) and feeling like absolute shit (it sucks to not party at a party and still feel horrible the last day - all the punishment, none of the sin) made my communication of "i feel ill and would really like to go now" pretty shoddy.

the queen went back to visiting, and i continued to lay down, only now i was crying, which i don't like doing in front of people i don't know. crying gets such weird reactions from people in general; pity, the need to know "why" you're crying, the desire to do something about it... most people don't just let you cry. not that the queen's friends hadn't been nice all weekend and wouldn't have kept being nice if i had cried in front of them, just that i would so much rather cry by myself. it's just easier.

so i cried til he came back, and i cried as he boosted his friends, and i cried as we looked briefly for a friend of mine we were going to give a ride to (who had already left because we came by later than i said we would), and i cried when the queen spoke sharply to me (i think he was annoyed because he felt pressured into leaving his friends quickly; i am still not sure, because the headache made it hard to do anything reasonable like listen or have conversation. but he was definitely upset). and i cried as i tried to explain to him how sorry i was, but i just kind of cracked. too much newness, not enough familiarity, too much trying to keep a 'stiff upper lip' and not enough connections with people i knew deeply enough to share all the real stuff swirling around beneath my surface.

the queen cannot be my only emotional support. generally speaking, the wife is another key figure, but she wasn't there. and of the two people who were there that i could have connected with, one i only saw briefly and the other i didn't see at all. i think if i had been able to share my experience with someone (feeling lonely, not yet connected to the people i was camped with, dealing with health issues and not using alcohol as the usual psychic dampener, trying not to tell the queen i was feeling so ill because that's pretty much all i say to him these days and he has expressed through feedback that he would like to hear about some other things instead of how crappy i am feeling).

once i started crying it was really hard to stop, even though i think it just made the headache worse. i cried for a good chunk of the ride home, and we barely spoke.

open the arms wide

exhausted.

savaging the wilds of late nights and early mornings. working. volunteering. dates. friendships. healing from an illness. walking. dancing. live comedy. reading. playing with children. everything but sleep.

it's been lovely. but so is sleep.

when i started this entry, it was storming. when the lightning really started coming down, i unplugged the computer because i've heard that power surges are bad and can fry your laptop (possibly an urban myth designed to fool luddites like myself). then the power went out, and i was glad i had done so.

i love how the line was immediately drawn for me; what one can do with power, what one does when there is no power. it was peaceful. it simplified my life enormously. read, play your own damn music instead of someone else's, create art, interact with your immediate surroundings, go to bed. (of course, given my state of mind, after connecting with neighbours and supplying children with flashlights, i went to bed. incidental cheer for headlamp inserted here.)

i feel out of sorts. my priorities are rearranging themselves, my activities are changing. what i do when i have twenty extra minutes is different now. i have different routines, desires, i've engaged in so much newness in the past two months, my sense of control is blasted wide open. who knows what this is like when i've stopped comparing it to anything? i love the sense of freedom from the past, but i sort of miss the rumination.

at work yesterday, someone decribed the edge of my energy field as they felt it. they said mine is larger than most, and demonstrated being just outside it, then inserting their arm. and i did feel differently as this happened, though who knows why. since i was aware he was doing this, it could have been a personal reaction to him, or following the idea that i want to think i have an energy field so large and so sensitive.

it's fun, but a bit absurdist to test one's reality now that we're even slightly aware of the power of the human mind to imagine things. i was chatting with Special Friend about dreams, and we got onto the things in dreams that don't come through. we can't read. digital clocks are screwy. what does this tell us about our unconscious? that our unconscious doesn't care about these, or doesn't speak the languages? that these are very much outside of us, and only influence us when we're awake? it's not numbers that are being ignored, i think. or even time. it's the system of communication. why write it down when our unconscious can just create the experience directly?

sure does make everything suspect though. "pinch me, am i dreaming?"

we're really not sure.

young grasshopper or elder-in-training?

having spent the last nine years, since my dad died, avoiding the deeper meaning in my life; i've been all a-search, but in reality, using the search mechanism to avoid myself. i have a sensitivity, and i need to manage it. like some folks have a great sense of smell, i have a great sense of emotion. i can honestly feel what other people are feeling, much of the time.

i generally just use this sense to feel out my environment for my own benefit, and to help my friends and occasionally other people understand the world and themselves. however, i've avoided any occasion to learn how to manage those abilities or train myself further, preferring to daydream and use my other skills to survive. it's generally safer not to let on that i'm a bit of an emotional barometer. people balk, joke, sneer, fear.

however, the intensity just kept on ramping up. first i gave up the festivals, parties are rare, anywhere there are groups of people is tough. and i live in a city. i'm tired of my opinion being swayed inevitably when i'm around someone who feels really strong about something (eventually, it's just easier to agree, even if i don't actually want what they want). i'm tired of feeling like it's the biggest deal just to walk through the farmer's market, due to the inevitable deflecting of the swirls of thoughts and emotions of others. it's like there are that many people talking in my head. it sucks. though it was worse when i thought those thoughts were all mine and i was schizophrenic.

and even though i've learned to identify others' emotions as separate from my own, i still need to be able to turn it off. so that i can go outside. so that i can travel. so that i can have sex with someone and not freak right out over the intensity of their emotions. so that i can choose proactively what i want in my life, not defensively.

so that's what i'm practicing. because it has the ability to fuck with every part of my life. and because it's part of why i'm here.