greenstorm | Focus.

So today, Tillie wrote: Intimacy without an intense or consuming focus.

This phrase resonated. Reading it felt like being rung, like a bell.

These particular waters are muddied. There are things I can say for certain: I can say, I have been living a life full of intimacy without an intense or consuming focus since Kynnin and Jan left it. I can say, I've been happy. I can stop, think, and add in a puzzled tone, I am happy. Why was that past tense?.

I have terrible things that I want to say to someone, words that have been stirred out of the sludge of my not-so-distant past and threaten to pull me back there. I want to give shape to these thoughts, to have a listener pull me out of them, but there are so few appropriate listeners. Perhaps what I want is to talk to myself.

I want to admit things. The other night there we are talking, and someone says, everyone's been going through big changes lately. I say, I haven't. They looked meaningfully at me, measured a height with their hand from there ground. I say, look, I don't know if that's the case yet, or if it will ever be. I'm only hoping. They replied, potential change, then.

But, yes. But, yes. A human being is not a static thing, not a point on a picture nor even a brushstroke captured there. Everything living is defined as living by change, and I am most certainly alive. I am *so* vibrant, *so* vital, lately. I've been so for months. Years, perhaps. Perhaps my lifetime, with breaks.

I went through a lot of changes very fast a year and a half ago. I wrote about them extensively at the time, laundry lists on my livejournal. Words can't really describe the things that happen with that much change; one thing that happened for me was that I grew very serene, I built stability, I created a space for myself that was very safe with the help of people who loved me (thank you, people).

I like it here. I like stability. I like serenity. And, of course- but.

But, perhaps it's time to look at these things I've been doing for so long, that have served me for so long, before the ruts worn by habit become high walls to hold me in. Perhaps it's time to look at myself and say, once more, what do I want?

Or perhaps that time is not quite yet.