hold your head up (movin on)
Jan. 3rd, 2018 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI don't know how to talk about the past year.
I broke up with Emily at the midpoint of the year. Certainly nothing that's ever come before has hit me as hard as that, and I include Chaos's death a month before in that. It's hard for me to conceive of anything that could possibly hit me that hard again. I am roughly two-thirds certain that it was absolutely the right thing to do and it still hurts too much to think much about.
Travel. Ha. Niagara, for a few days of the Gathering. Washington state twice, once for Mouths of Babes with Emily and once for a pagan gathering with Erin. And a great many trips to Fort St James in the Interior, a twelve-hour drive from Vancouver and roughly seventy km north of the geographic centre of the province.
I think that "travel" doesn't matter so much as, mm, the experience of something-different that comes with it. I used to need to be away from home every so often. Now I'd like to have a home. I'm moving again at the end of the month, back into the condo, because I lack the mental wherewithal to find my own place. Which means I'll almost certainly be moving again in the fall once we're actually ready to sell, assuming that something turns up that's worth the buying for either of us.
That of course means my short-term finances are in relatively miserable shape and do not look to get any better anytime soon. That is, I'm sinking money into the condo and I will eventually see it again (assuming there's not a Vancouver real estate crash), but it's not immediately available to me. I am not short on available funds by any means, but I watch my liquid savings account dwindle and shrug.
The one place where I can point to undeniable, unmixed progress is physical. Biking has been lovely, for all that it takes away from music-listening or book-reading time in transit. Yoga's a wonder as well. I feel calmer and more ... open ... afterwards, without the sense of having to push myself to get going, or beat myself up to keep at it. At times I catch myself enjoying my physical existence, which is ... not entirely new, but new in this frequent or sustained a way.
And social? Ha. I get out to Holly's game nights about once a month; I've been to one or two other things. Plans to host/curate my own ... whatever ... have gone on indefinite hold while I attempt to catch my breath and sort through some of my own stuff. I've lost at least three friends as a result of the breakup. On the brighter side, there are a number of people I'm closer to, and I'm slowly learning how to be closer to people.
I mean, that's the real takeaway from this exhausting and not-infrequently hellish year. I'm not writing, I'm keeping up with viola (to the extent that I am) through sheer bloody-mindedness. I've been able to keep up semimonthly 18xx games, more or less; other gaming, not so much. But I'm learning. I'm making some progress on personal things that I've been chipping away at for over a decade. I spent years trying to change my situation while working on myself, and that didn't help enough, and now I've put fire to my situation and there's nothing left but me. And so I can start to rebuild that me. Perhaps a rebuilt me will be able to build a situation that I can live with.
Last year I wrote This is not where I'd planned to be, and nothing like where I'd thought I might be. Ha. Still true, maybe even more so. I decided that where I was at wasn't working and threw it all up in the air to see where it would land, what would shatter, what would stay, what I wanted and was able to catch.
I don't know what happens now. I don't know where I'll be this time next year. I don't feel excited about that, or resigned, just ... sometimes, curious.
I broke up with Emily at the midpoint of the year. Certainly nothing that's ever come before has hit me as hard as that, and I include Chaos's death a month before in that. It's hard for me to conceive of anything that could possibly hit me that hard again. I am roughly two-thirds certain that it was absolutely the right thing to do and it still hurts too much to think much about.
Travel. Ha. Niagara, for a few days of the Gathering. Washington state twice, once for Mouths of Babes with Emily and once for a pagan gathering with Erin. And a great many trips to Fort St James in the Interior, a twelve-hour drive from Vancouver and roughly seventy km north of the geographic centre of the province.
I think that "travel" doesn't matter so much as, mm, the experience of something-different that comes with it. I used to need to be away from home every so often. Now I'd like to have a home. I'm moving again at the end of the month, back into the condo, because I lack the mental wherewithal to find my own place. Which means I'll almost certainly be moving again in the fall once we're actually ready to sell, assuming that something turns up that's worth the buying for either of us.
That of course means my short-term finances are in relatively miserable shape and do not look to get any better anytime soon. That is, I'm sinking money into the condo and I will eventually see it again (assuming there's not a Vancouver real estate crash), but it's not immediately available to me. I am not short on available funds by any means, but I watch my liquid savings account dwindle and shrug.
The one place where I can point to undeniable, unmixed progress is physical. Biking has been lovely, for all that it takes away from music-listening or book-reading time in transit. Yoga's a wonder as well. I feel calmer and more ... open ... afterwards, without the sense of having to push myself to get going, or beat myself up to keep at it. At times I catch myself enjoying my physical existence, which is ... not entirely new, but new in this frequent or sustained a way.
And social? Ha. I get out to Holly's game nights about once a month; I've been to one or two other things. Plans to host/curate my own ... whatever ... have gone on indefinite hold while I attempt to catch my breath and sort through some of my own stuff. I've lost at least three friends as a result of the breakup. On the brighter side, there are a number of people I'm closer to, and I'm slowly learning how to be closer to people.
I mean, that's the real takeaway from this exhausting and not-infrequently hellish year. I'm not writing, I'm keeping up with viola (to the extent that I am) through sheer bloody-mindedness. I've been able to keep up semimonthly 18xx games, more or less; other gaming, not so much. But I'm learning. I'm making some progress on personal things that I've been chipping away at for over a decade. I spent years trying to change my situation while working on myself, and that didn't help enough, and now I've put fire to my situation and there's nothing left but me. And so I can start to rebuild that me. Perhaps a rebuilt me will be able to build a situation that I can live with.
Last year I wrote This is not where I'd planned to be, and nothing like where I'd thought I might be. Ha. Still true, maybe even more so. I decided that where I was at wasn't working and threw it all up in the air to see where it would land, what would shatter, what would stay, what I wanted and was able to catch.
I don't know what happens now. I don't know where I'll be this time next year. I don't feel excited about that, or resigned, just ... sometimes, curious.
if i stumble i will stumble
if i fall i will fall
trying to hold it like rain in a river
everything is getting bigger
better this won't last forever
touch me fall