Space Between

It's a morning.

I've been going to work a little later for the last week or two. It crowds the end of the day, but it gives me this little space alone, when the house is still warm from the landlord's cranking the heat up in the morning, and before the day really hits me hard. The days have been hitting me hard, lately.

Mostly I solve this by climbing and by burying myself in work, internet, and friends. The days will hit me a little harder for awhile, and then I anticipate a bit of a break, a release for a little while. I wish, sometimes, that I didn't have reason to be so well-acquainted with my grief cycle. The whole denial, numbness, anger, sadness: rinse and repeat thing seems worse when you know it's coming. Feels a little like running around a track, but when I run on a track each lap makes me happier because I know I've gone further. With this, each lap brings me further away from a past I enjoyed. This isn't to say that I've made decisions to make my life worse, because in actual fact it gets better with each set; it's just to say that the loss of anything I love brings mourning and regret, which come forward and mingle with the current joy and comfort in my life.

I like the light on mornings like these, still and grey, quiet, and gentle. The day is coming, it will be here soon. Lately sunshine comes, and that's really a joy even with the cold. They 're good mornings to steal my alone-time in, after Bob has gone to work and before I don my uniform and my face for the day. My fingers are sore from climbing, a level of comfortable muscle fatigue that is really quite pleasant. The feel of my hair is soft around my shoulders, it's been a long time since it was this long, and there's a steak in the fridge for me for today.

Juggler and I aren't together anymore, still friends, but not dating. It was my second-longest relationship to date, and he's been very good to me. I don't expect him to disappear out of my life: the friendship feels very strong. Still, the numbness sets in, when I think too close to it it hurts like crazy, and I find I have nothing to give anyone, right now. This is why I love my friendships; it's because they tolerate who I am without making demands on what I can sometimes be.

Enough angst for now. Time to make a salad, feed the ratties, and go to work.

Another Link

Kurrs? I'm trying to get out to this, certainly Sat, with a fellow permie dude named Max... you in?

http://www.ams.ubc.ca/student_life/resource_groups/sec/sec%20conference.pdf

To Do

Communicate with:
Drew
Mom
Eva
Tillie
Avi
Boss
Climbing group

Meet with
Tillie
Eva

Sleep Well

Sleep well, Sprite. Sleep well, Helen. Sleep well, bridge piercing. Sleep well, relationship with Juggler.

Sleep well. Rest in peace. Come as smiling dreams, and leave only gentle holes that time will mellow into sweet nostalgia.

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would
Let it go...

This desperation
Dislocation
Separation
Condemnation
Revelation
In temptation
Isolation
Desolation
Let it go

And so fade away
To let it go
And so fade away
To let it go
And so to fade away

Im wide awake
Im wide awake
Wide awake
Im not sleeping
Oh, no, no, no

(no subject)

I want to write about the feelings here, but I can't because feelings are the one thing that never come clearly. You know, when I ran away to Abbotsford for the night there was a certain quality to the curve of Trevor's arm around me that you never get anywhere else, just like stroking Sprite's nose and stroking Helen's nose are totally different acts, and how Paris is my favourite rat because of the way he moves in a snuggle against me when I hold him, or even when he's just in the cage and I come into the room. I couldn't even begin to describe the difference between the warm flesh of a shoulder, Bob or Juggler, the way repetitions upon repetitions from those nights of sleeping have etched some sort of meaning onto what is, in the end, still just fragrant warm meat-- and how do you describe the difference there, the feeling of it? Somehow I know that each night doesn't come again, it never repeats, and yet there is a similarity in something like that that leads to comfort and soothing that only come with some sort of security.

Now we've had days on sunshine, and the rain has come, and I know the summer will turn and the sun will come again. The earth is a security that has never been taken from me, that never can be. That's the gardener in me. I only ever speak in metaphor when I'm trying to say something very specific because I find the fine details are so huge, such an enormous part of life that the whole world comesa down in them. This is what they call holograms? Within each tiny piece the whole is encapsulated.

I only write like this when I lose myself in life, when it overwhelms me. Right now I'm beat down, sometimes I'm swept up, but it amounts to the same thing, to being so much smaller than the huge tide of it that... well. That I can't see myself, a grain of sand, to use that so-overused metaphor.

During childhood I learned to dissociate at the drop of a hat, the turn of a mouth, the slightest gesture or word when something bad was coming. It means I've lost out on a lot of my life, leaving myself somewhere safe to watch myself puppetting around. I'm getting my life back now, and I'm learning too that sadness shouldn't be talked over, talked around, polished smooth-- it should just be felt, and then life goes on. Still, grief requires a period of adjustment, a numbness where the inside is carefully setting things up so that when everything sags, nothing falls over.

Goodnight. I'm off to life for awhile