***STRESS*** (relief?)
Jul. 3rd, 2003 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormHm. Well, that's about the size of it. Whether the situation right now is actually more stressful than it's been in the last while or not, I've definitely got the symptoms. I've had this sort of thing once before in the last month and it quieted down -- I can't for the life of me remember when it was, except that it was on a day I met the Juggler and a bunch of stuff happened right before it. That cleared up pretty quickly, but this has been hanging around for the last two days, ever since I got home.
What's stress? It's a body thing to a certain extent, with temperature swings, sweat or shivers, the feeling of moving really slowly as if through syrup, a weird electrical headache, clumsiness and muscle stiffness and the inability to recognise my body when I look at it or to see it as really distorted (ie. what's that thing? It's my leg. It seems to be deformed... is that muscle always there?). There's a mental component too: inability to remember anything, concentrate, or string words together coherently, total lack of ability to cope with anything, extreme irritability and irrational stupidity (I'm sorry, SO!) and just general lack of functionality.
The symptoms go away when I plunge deeply enough into solitary escapism, so I'm doing some serious reading over the last couple of days. They return when I think about certain trigger points (sometimes) or specifically when I discuss those trigger things with people.
What's this mean? I need to think harder about those trigger points and get them worked out so they stop following me around and I can resume the rest of my life. I feel like I need a bunch of input on stuff, but realistically I think I pretty much know what I need to do and am just afraid to go ahead and do it.
What's this all have to do with? This'll be news to no one now, but my relationship with the Exotic was ended at the beginning of the weekend-ish due to 'irreconcilable differences in poly stuff' to be as specific as I need to be. Turns out these differences are, after a weekend, no longer irreconcilable to him.
No, I'm not going to go into the ramifications of all that on livejournal, but hell! Now I have to figure a whole bunch of stuff out in that arena just when I'd begun to let it go over the weekend. Sad I was ready to deal with. Reevaluating a relationship from the ground up on a completely different footing, or rather on several footings and deciding whether any of them fit? Bah. Bah! I don't want to make a mistake here. Either way.
Eek. I guess the lack of focus tends to keep me from getting hysterical. :P
People were pretty sympathetic at the beginning of the weekend, but this particular bit of information hasn't been comforted out of me much. I've talked to the SO a bunch but I'm home now, so I'm away from most of the other people I could talk to. I think that's what I really need -- some perspective, some similar-situation stories, that kind of thing. Just the idea that other people have done this sort of thing and it hasn't been the end of the world either way.
What else do I need? I need to talk to the Exotic more, which I'm kind of dreading. I hate to think that any decision I make might make him feel bad, but I just can't bias it to preserve his feelings short-term. I need to decide this for me. There's a lot of communication weirdness between us lately that I need to at least get on the table.
And I think I need to stop writing now, and go back to bed, try to breathe a little better and read some more. My typo rate is approximately two-per-word (clumsy when stressed).
For all that, though, I'm not unhappy -- just frustrated at my inability to bust through this quickly and at my helplessness to just shrug it off, and very 'busy', I guess, processing things up there. At the very least, this is stress because I need to decide things for myself and so my stuff is in my own hands -- that's bettter than sitting back helplessly and being wildly unhappy with a situatin you don't think you can change.
So! Your job? Tell me yo-yo relationship and breakup and irreconcilable-poly stories here or in email or by telephone.
Wow. It really feels better to have talked about that, even a little. Or, rather, to have got it out without interruption. The symptoms are suddenly about halved. Empowerment, asking for what you need and knowing what it is, is cool. Figuring out what you need is pretty much the big half of anything.
Take care, yous. Have a good night, and feel free to think up a good plural 'you' for English. Ambiguity is weird and stuff. ;)
What's stress? It's a body thing to a certain extent, with temperature swings, sweat or shivers, the feeling of moving really slowly as if through syrup, a weird electrical headache, clumsiness and muscle stiffness and the inability to recognise my body when I look at it or to see it as really distorted (ie. what's that thing? It's my leg. It seems to be deformed... is that muscle always there?). There's a mental component too: inability to remember anything, concentrate, or string words together coherently, total lack of ability to cope with anything, extreme irritability and irrational stupidity (I'm sorry, SO!) and just general lack of functionality.
The symptoms go away when I plunge deeply enough into solitary escapism, so I'm doing some serious reading over the last couple of days. They return when I think about certain trigger points (sometimes) or specifically when I discuss those trigger things with people.
What's this mean? I need to think harder about those trigger points and get them worked out so they stop following me around and I can resume the rest of my life. I feel like I need a bunch of input on stuff, but realistically I think I pretty much know what I need to do and am just afraid to go ahead and do it.
What's this all have to do with? This'll be news to no one now, but my relationship with the Exotic was ended at the beginning of the weekend-ish due to 'irreconcilable differences in poly stuff' to be as specific as I need to be. Turns out these differences are, after a weekend, no longer irreconcilable to him.
No, I'm not going to go into the ramifications of all that on livejournal, but hell! Now I have to figure a whole bunch of stuff out in that arena just when I'd begun to let it go over the weekend. Sad I was ready to deal with. Reevaluating a relationship from the ground up on a completely different footing, or rather on several footings and deciding whether any of them fit? Bah. Bah! I don't want to make a mistake here. Either way.
Eek. I guess the lack of focus tends to keep me from getting hysterical. :P
People were pretty sympathetic at the beginning of the weekend, but this particular bit of information hasn't been comforted out of me much. I've talked to the SO a bunch but I'm home now, so I'm away from most of the other people I could talk to. I think that's what I really need -- some perspective, some similar-situation stories, that kind of thing. Just the idea that other people have done this sort of thing and it hasn't been the end of the world either way.
What else do I need? I need to talk to the Exotic more, which I'm kind of dreading. I hate to think that any decision I make might make him feel bad, but I just can't bias it to preserve his feelings short-term. I need to decide this for me. There's a lot of communication weirdness between us lately that I need to at least get on the table.
And I think I need to stop writing now, and go back to bed, try to breathe a little better and read some more. My typo rate is approximately two-per-word (clumsy when stressed).
For all that, though, I'm not unhappy -- just frustrated at my inability to bust through this quickly and at my helplessness to just shrug it off, and very 'busy', I guess, processing things up there. At the very least, this is stress because I need to decide things for myself and so my stuff is in my own hands -- that's bettter than sitting back helplessly and being wildly unhappy with a situatin you don't think you can change.
So! Your job? Tell me yo-yo relationship and breakup and irreconcilable-poly stories here or in email or by telephone.
Wow. It really feels better to have talked about that, even a little. Or, rather, to have got it out without interruption. The symptoms are suddenly about halved. Empowerment, asking for what you need and knowing what it is, is cool. Figuring out what you need is pretty much the big half of anything.
Take care, yous. Have a good night, and feel free to think up a good plural 'you' for English. Ambiguity is weird and stuff. ;)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
The SO
Date: 2003-07-04 12:24 am (UTC)Just remind me next time to not try and talk you out of being irritable; it doesn't help or work. ;-)
Re: The SO
Date: 2003-07-04 01:54 am (UTC)But thank you. It's nice to have you around, especially now. I really am starting to trust that you are, and will be, here when I need you.
That means, of course, that you're about a million times more trustworthy than a normally trustworthy person. I'm a little slow in picking that sort of thing up sometimes.
Have a good night out there (yeah, I know) and I'll see you in the morning... or whenever I wake up after this.
Oh! You have some plans to clarify, timewise, in an email while you're there?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-04 05:04 am (UTC)Could you email me with that? I can then think about it for a bit before I see you again. We can then talk about them if that's okay.
Re: The SO
Date: 2003-07-04 06:55 am (UTC)Probably one of those cases of being too familiar with him to easily revise early images -- and the early image probably came not from him, but from some male archetype in your head, perhaps? I have a male archetype in my head who is dreadfully untrustworthy, but between Juggler and SO they've pretty much smashed it. They're making it really hard to keep being an island (swampy, unstable island though it is).
I've got a whole store of unfortunate yo-yo and irreconcilable poly differences breakup stories -- more than you can shake a poached bunny/really full daytimer/sheaf of divorce papers/bottle of Valium at. My two divorced friends are both poly with not-poly ex-wives. You've heard the story of when Juggler and I broke up. And I've had three men do flip-flops on me, wherein their attitudes towards poly varied depending on their own personal ratios of horniness/insecurity at the time. Argh. Breaking up should not be used as a bargaining chip.
The plural 'you' is "all y'all", according to an acquaintance in West Virginia. It actually sounds normal when *she* says it, believe it or not.
Re: The SO
Date: 2003-07-04 07:55 am (UTC)Good. I think I want those stories. :)
Re: The SO
Date: 2003-07-04 08:01 am (UTC)Oh, I don't trust women either. I just have different reasons -- different archetypes :-P