(no subject)

Today the main antagonist was myself.

Yesterday I could enjoy resting and doing not-so-much. Today was tiny bursts of agency and the rest of the time it was a struggle to live with myself. First I made saskatoon scones and that was good, but the rest of the day I wouldn't let myself eat. Ron came to pick up a thing and I left the thing outside so I didn't have to see him. Work colleague came to pick up the piglet and I was grumpy about it. I was grumpy about everything.

I sorted through corn kernels and they were beautiful and I snitched some of my very favourite from the bag (I'm sending rest to A&E) and I was still grumpy even though I found an eagle kernel. I came up with a plan to cross those selected kernels, painted mountain, with Morden and I'm still grumpy. I have saskatoon berry syrup for my tea and I'm still grumpy. I can't relax into being grumpy because I'm--

I read Peter Beagle's Two Hearts today, which I had been avoiding since it came out because I'm not emotionally equipped to handle it. My ability for personal growth is in a lot of ways rooted in one of two sides of a duality: on the one side, I can grow when I'm feeling safe. On the other side, when something needs to be done that's scary and it's always going to be scary, I feel like I'm already basically dead anyhow so why not? Maybe neither of those is why I chose to read this when Tucker is unavailable and there is quiet in my space. The original book, Last Unicorn, is one of the ones that I can fully inhabit. I can't talk about the story except that I see a flash of myself there, like a flash of light on a ripple of water when it hits just the right angle. So now I'm lonely and taken apart and grumpy and resentful that I'm not, I don't know, something. Seen.

It's not quite grey and not quite windy and not quite cold. I don't want to talk to anyone and I don't want to be alone. I don't want to eat. Being hungry is deeply annoying. Now the wind is picking up and the noise of it is uncharacteristically feeling raw on my shoulders and in my skull. The inevitability of time is annoying me. I'm not tired enough to sleep.

Ugh.

I don't want to live with the person I am today. It's not even the time in my cycle when I normally feel like this.

I wonder if I can dig up my Carol Deppe book and read about corn genetics? That might help.

You don't know me

I have a new favourite line, which is "I get to decide what I'm [thinking/feeling/getting from this/willing to compromise]" and it feels amazing to use it. This is truly the joy of a three-year-old who's learned to say "no". It's liberating and empowering and tends to leave the folks who were using me as a prop in their own internal dramas speechless.

Someone says they can't do X because I won't want to do Y, and they haven't asked me? Deploy the line.

Someone says they think they're getting more out of an interaction than I am? Deploy the line.

I have not needed to deploy the line with my regular folks in a long time, which is lovely. It's good to have this tool going out into the world.