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adventures in quarantine, Uncategorized

I can live and breathe and see the sun.

tec

Alright. As my week wraps up and I review the hellish “through not around” that I waded in with my daughter this week, I want to take the opportunity to note some tangible tools I have learned.

Embrace the steps.

Step one. It’s not about me. It’s unmanageable. It’s not mine. Step two. Someone else has got this. Step three. Take a step back and let it be that someone else’s. Step six. Practice the pause.

I realize I’m skipping four and five here.  It’s not to minimize them. Those ones have deeper digging. They do not pertain quite yet within my immediate, tangible action.

Create the tiniest gap.

My goal–that I haven’t taken much time to write about–is that I want the voices in my head to quiet. That quiet is the peace I am aspiring to. That quiet is a return to my best and highest self.

When the thought loops run rampant, as they are wont to do unchecked, I spiral out. I want so much more than that for myself. I am so much more than that.

I have options. I can tell the voice to fuck off. I can turn my attention to constructive actions. I can write down the thought loops and walk away from them. I can mantra in my head “words and opportunity”. I can ask to have it taken away. I can journal longform about it. I can ask myself “Am I acting from a place of love or s place of fear?”

Whichever I choose, the act of pausing and deciding creates a gap for the universe to come in and support me.

Move.

This is just a good go to on any day. Gets me simultaneously in my head and out of my head. It grounds me to the earth and the universe. It provides the connection back to self.

Reality is kinetic.

Perspective dictates that not only can people have entirely different experiences to the same situation, but those experiences can morph and muddle with time. Reality can shift and transmogrify, and none of it is real and all of it is real. Whatever we remember and however we filter it creates a picture through our lens and it becomes our truth.

This isn’t good nor bad. It’s life. This is something I’ve always been aware of, but I had many attachment thoughts about it. It is now clear to me it is something I need to accept. I don’t have a “how” for that right yet. But all the other tangible things I’ve come to acquire this week tell me that I can ask for the how and then I can wait and it’ll be given to me when I need it.

So….I’m learning to do the work and also just stop. Both and neither. Click click and click.

~~~~~~~

I want to add. My process normally is that I write and then I share and talk about it with Chris. I’ve found in the past that when I talk it over first, I never write about it, and I don’t like losing that part.

I’ve been trying to write this particular post all week and none of it came. It was too wordy and circumvented all the tangibility.

I was finally able to, yesterday, share with Chris the events that unfolded over the week. His week began with a seizure and recovery, and mine was full of navigating Tuesday with R and the week with the boys.

After connecting with Chris last night to share the story of my week, and after he listened so attentively and responded so compassionately, it allowed this post to flow easily. We were us, with all the extra personal growth we’ve worked for. It is goodness.

adventures in quarantine, Adventures in running, Uncategorized

Anything but empty.

tec

I let the universe take care of me today. I let the people who love me turn my day around.

After I posted earlier, I went outside with the boys, but it wasn’t enough. My body needed to move. My mind needed to turn off. I employed R’s help with L and took off. I wasn’t even intending to run. I just needed to move.

I walked the first half, and then, suddenly, down a hill, barely with permission from my mind, my body started running. Experience tells me it was probably a minute thirty. It felt so good. Then I took off again after a short walk and that was probably 45 seconds. Then came the section I ran last night in two minutes. Today I timed it and it was a minute 45 and I didn’t want to forfeit the fifteen seconds, so I ran more. And then more. And again.

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Fucking two thirty! Amazing.

I needed a little extra walking time, so I added another side street, making the walk almost two miles.

I got home and my Chris was there, celebrating right alongside me. Fistbump explosions for days. Beaming with pride.

And then he let me just vent about my feelings. And then we came in and I needed to give a very dirt-covered L a bath. And I wasn’t expecting the company, but the company felt so fucking good and Chris and I just sat in the bathroom and kept talking while L took his bath.

He showed up for me so hard today. It means everything.

adventures in quarantine, Uncategorized

The courage I know.

tec

Yesterday was so amazing. And today is hard.

PT this morning was good. Bittersweet. I don’t have any more scheduled appointments with Eliott and I don’t know if I will or not. Gotta see what my doc says about next steps with my arm marbles. But he gave me a bunch more stretches to do and this amazing book of myofascial stretches. I’m so grateful.

And then I had to bring my Mouse to the vet to be put down. That one is hard. His tumor got so big. It was bigger than his head and he hated it and scratched at it and the poor thing. But also he was still so active and I feel terrible that I had to end the active part to be able to end the painful part.

So then when I got home I kinda threw future/ideal me out the window and cut myself a break. And didn’t fuel my body the way I would on other days. These things happen. I ate a few potato chips with homemade frosting and moved on.

Uncategorized

Trace the moment.

tec

Chris and I have a perfect place. He found it first. He shared it with me. It’s this little tucked away place that doesn’t even feel like it’s part of our town. Or our state. It’s our sacred place. It’s hitsuzen. We have to have a certain kind of weather for it tho and winter is often not it.

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A couple weeks ago it was perfect outside tho. Still snow on the ground, but the bike path was almost entirely clear of snow and ice. The air was crisp, but the sun was so warm that it didn’t matter.

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Despite the fact that the car had been making this weird noise, we risked the 20 minute drive to go for the walk. It was worth it to get that kind of time in that kind of place. A place that brings us back to ourselves. For me, it doesn’t bring me back to an older, idealized version of me or an older, iidealized version of Chris. It just always brings us to a more grounded place of our present selves. I think that’s what I always love most about it. The everything else falls away and we’re stripped down to our purest, naked selves and we can just be.

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We walked for maybe an hour and munched clementines and kiwi. We showed L all the cool things we love and he ooh’d and ahh’d the 50 foot wall cliff and the train tracks and the river and the trees.

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We stopped and marveled the sewer/tunnel pipe and L made up stories about it coming out into the river. And then he sang songs as we walked on.

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The day before this walk, we walked too. The weather begged our presence. Our relationship begged connection. We showed up. It’s the greatest thing we can do.

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We always walk back to us. This season has been filled with ebb and flow and pain and growth. Distance and connection. Falling away and coming back. As the earth warms again, I feel a tingling of change. There’s a buzz my skin feels. A fire sparking. Despite the ebbs–and there will always be ebbs–I can feel the flow’s energy building up momentum.

Yesterday Chris and I had a…discordance. It wasn’t an argument. It was just….an overwhelm of feelings and thoughts and fears. It was vulnerability and anxiety and honesty. In years’ past, it would have broken us. It would have been a full on argument. It would have been irreconcilable for hours, the day, the weekend. It would have been the thing that, Chris especially, wouldn’t have been able to navigate through. (I say Chris especially because for the most part, I lean toward compartmentalizing as an involuntary coping mechanism. I’m not bragging here…)

But yesterday, because we’ve both had so much growth–because he is diligently searching to reclaim his self–it was only discordance and an exchange. The moment of ebb made the subsequent flow that much more energized. It was like reaching hitsuzen without the walk.

Uncategorized

Burst like white light.

tec

It’s my birthday. And I’m upstairs making pizzas for everyone while my husband is downstairs trying to perfect a song he wrote for me, which is my present, I’m assuming, whenever he is comfortable enough with it to come back upstairs.

And, yes, of course, I’d always prefer the time with him. But I love the notes wafting upstairs. I love how they envelop me even when his arms can’t. I love how I can feel his love even when his fingers are playing his guitar instead of me. I love that he is trying to perfect something that is already perfect as is. That’s what his love looks like. And I’m certain I’ll love the gift he’s giving me, but that alone is gift enough.

Uncategorized

Hands of a clock.

tec

If you were to ask Chris how our week has gone as a couple, he would say that we feel a million miles away.

If you were to ask me, I’d say that he had some challenging days this week that kept him from me, and that I had a few hours one evening that kept me from him, navigating those days that kept him from me.

Last night, while we were running late and the cat was in the garage, making it inaccessible (the garage, not the cat…tho she wasn’t accessible either…), and I needed to get L’s carseat installed in the car and everything was all snowy and icy and slippery, and we were in a rush to get Chris to his meeting and get the boys to science night at the school, there was this incredible pause. He just came over and he put his hand on my face and the world stopped. And we kissed and nothing else existed in that moment. And no one would have ever been able to say he and I were a million miles from one another.

Uncategorized

The fire in your eyes.

tec

Today I brought a freshly baked loaf of bread home from the store. My daughter was all ooooooh. I excitedly said, “feel how squishy!” She felt it and I could tell she wasn’t on board with my excitement. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “It’s too squishy. Is it too squishy? It’s not supposed to be squishy.” I told her it was perfect. She said, “But you always have me feel the bread first to get a firm one…”

And the look she gave me. The realization she’s been doing it the wrong way all this time. She could have disappeared completely and I just hugged her and kept her with me and said “Oh, sweet girl” over and over.

She’s been coming into her own so much recently. It’s just astounding to watch as she morphs from this hostile, hormonal teenager into…a person.

Tonight she came out and showed me and Chris her wrist. She had written “victory” on it and was giddy excited. She said it’s like the semicolon movement and she had worked so hard to write it all perfect.

After she walked out of the room I said, “Man, I love how every day she becomes a little more me,” and it was my turn to be a bit giddy. Chris said, pointing to my face and happy demeanor, “I love how this is all going on with you.” And, even tho I didn’t say it at the time, I love all the little things going on with him right now too.

I used to write on my wrists. Like R did tonight. Little messages. Reminders. Tethers. It’s all these separate things we’re doing that help remind me all the ways we’re connected.

Uncategorized

I’m bare-boned and crazy for you.

tec

Here it is Sunday night. Almost time for sleep. Truth be told, I should have gone to sleep an hour ago. I just want to take some time to reflect on my weekend first.

I don’t know that I had a picture Friday night of what I wanted for my weekend. And maybe that’s better. Expectations tend to sabotage future moments.

Friday night I ended up going to sleep and Chris and I hadn’t watched any episodes of Heroes. I know he had kinda passed out at one point and was pretty bummed about being human and tired and needing sleep. As I was getting ready for sleep, I came to find a very old blog I had written at for many years. Life is weird. It provided a momentary distraction and now I’m kinda over it. (It’s a good “over it” tho. The kind where there is nothing from the past holding onto me today.)

Saturday morning was sheets of ice for roads, and my alanon meeting, and later long connecty conversations with Chris and a snowstorm that didn’t storm as much as predicted. It was me buying a domain name for this here blog and allowing it to have an official home that I can call my own. It was lit candles and opening the year 4 anniversary tobacco blend. It was Chris marking me as his and kisses and entanglements and too cold kitchen and perfect warm bedrooms. It was spooning and contented slumbers. It was multiple Heroes episodes and bliss.

Today, yesterday’s sparse-ish snow afforded us a shopping trip and a restock of healthier food to make way for healthier plans. It was moments of overstimulation (on my part) that provided opportunity to share my voice and my thoughts and my ruffled feathers. And it gave Chris the opportunity to show me how “defensive” isn’t his go to anymore and how we can have reasonable conversations and I learned that I was able to perceive his reactions accurately.

I know we’re always practicing our individual, personal growth as well as growth in our relationship. It was really cool today tho to see so clearly how it has evolved. So many aspects of ourselves are the same as (almost) seven years ago, and soooooo many are different. We are better people. And really, that’s just always what I want for myself. I want to try and fuck up and try again and practice and mess up and, at the end of the day, no matter the little moments, I want my big picture to reveal that I was always growing into better. And that we were always striving for that together.

Uncategorized

I’ll wait up for you, dear.

tec

I had such a nice day with my husband.

This sounds a little odd to say, seeing as it was a day filled with family and goings on and the neverendingness.

But also. I had such a nice day with my husband.

Today wasn’t really about the time we spent with each other. It was about the effortlessness of fluidity. It was about how we could be in a room together or a room apart and we still managed things in quiet synchronicity.

He did the dishes and cleaned the bathroom. While I wrapped presents and got Christmas stuff ready. He changed the cat’s litter while I vacuumed. He chilled in the living room with some family, while I chilled in the kitchen with other members of the family. We would meet up and we would separate.

We flowed.

I didn’t have nearly enough time with him today. I didn’t touch him enough or kiss him enough or take downtime with him enough. But still, I felt like we were in this together. On a day that is typically chaotic and intense and overwhelming, it felt easy to navigate family Christmas with him. He made my day.

Uncategorized

Thinking of ways to get back home.

tec

Fuck. My eating disorder is fucking loud today.

I had started my day excited that it felt like a new start of healthiness and healing.

I made Brussels sprouts even!

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Oh, but did my body (mind?) have other plans!

This fucking sucks.

Like, truly. And I want to turn it off. But it’s not a switch. It’s a weight. And I really just don’t have the means to push it off or shrug.

All I can do is write.

And of course it didn’t occur to me before the ice cream bar at 9am to write. Or the cake at 9:45. It was only at 10:30 when the sugar high made my head swim and I realized I should make some protein that I remembered writing is the shrug. I need the accountability. But now I still have to eat this despite not being hungry because fuck, the swimming.

But then I will sit down. And I won’t eat more. And I won’t self-medicate–I’ll only self-care. And maybe cry some because it hurts a lot, and then I will sleep. I need to oxygen mask myself today, even if just for a little while.