Everything
Aug. 14th, 2012 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI'm sitting in my slightly-overwarm apartment, 10 minutes into
which is Eddy Vedder singing "Thumbing my way" live.
I'm supposed to be cleaning house and, specifically, covering traces of rat so when they come to check the fire stuff in the morning with the necessary 3 days' notice they won't get upset at me for having too many small animals. In the other room, where I'm supposed to be cleaning, Eve has had her babies-- a tiny pink crop of little ones that should grow up the colour of a bright redhead, and sweet as honey.
Instead of cleaning, clearly, I am writing.
I'm thirty-one now. The birthday is recent, and it sits oddly on my skin. I can't remember really having my age drive into me before, not so that I could feel it. Now I can feel it. This concert I'm listening to is all about mortality, what to keep and what to let sift by. Pearl Jam has always been the soundtrack of my life, from when I was 14 or 15 and got the CD when living in the transition house in Mission, right on through. As with all of my relationships there have been long lulls. Excepting maybe Trevor, this relationship has been longer than any of my non-family relationships.
And oh, do I ever have need of understanding, of long relatinships, of knowing what to hold onto and what to let sift by right now! I'm doing... fine. I'm going to work, I'm not looking for an interesting new job, I'm not engaging the world really, I'm paring down twitter and paying my rent and dealing with bills and arguing with my boyfriend sometimes and not other times. I'm doing the minimum necessary to feed myself, keep cages clean, keep things from rotting on the countertops.
I'm not thriving.
I don't know if this is post-school lull, where I've been told what to do for so long that I need to rebuild my own initiative and decision-making faculties. I don't know if it's depression, maybe from a brief and soon-discontinued foray into birth control pills (BAD IDEA) or just on its own. I don't know if it's plain conditioning, being in a relationship where the things that feed me make my partner unhappy so often. I don't know if it's just me, lazy or on a low bit.
I do know I'm in the birth canal again, and the contractions are not at all comfortable, and it seems I won't be whatever I will become for a little while yet. It's the waiting space. It's, if you like, the dead space-- but death feeds everything, it powers the way things turn and turn again, and it enables life to build and rebuild on itself, attaining unexpected complexities.
I'm writing. Right here, typing words onto a (ugh) slightly sticky keyboard. Do you know how good that feels? And no, he's not in the house. And no, he doesn't know I'm home. I can't call this into being by saying, 'can you go play boardgames on Tuesday, honey? I need the house to myself'. It has to happen by itself. And it hasn't been, because he's been unemployed for so freaking long, and before that I was in school.
And I'm thinking, does this mean I'm doing it wrong? Is this why I'm not chiming internally, singing and bumping ideas into each other and taking up space? Is it because he's around so much? If so, what do I do, or do I just become this quieter, less-thinking person and roll into it? Does it mean I shouldn't move in with him, or not with anyone? Or is it something to do with externals and not the relationship at all? Mom said, a long time ago, that she worried I used my relationships to inform too much of my self. Is that what I'm doing? Losing my own self for his?
I just don't fucking know. So my brain is alternately chugging in the background and churning LOUDER THAN ANYTHING ELSE on this. And that's that.
I'll get those cages clean now.
which is Eddy Vedder singing "Thumbing my way" live.
I'm supposed to be cleaning house and, specifically, covering traces of rat so when they come to check the fire stuff in the morning with the necessary 3 days' notice they won't get upset at me for having too many small animals. In the other room, where I'm supposed to be cleaning, Eve has had her babies-- a tiny pink crop of little ones that should grow up the colour of a bright redhead, and sweet as honey.
Instead of cleaning, clearly, I am writing.
I'm thirty-one now. The birthday is recent, and it sits oddly on my skin. I can't remember really having my age drive into me before, not so that I could feel it. Now I can feel it. This concert I'm listening to is all about mortality, what to keep and what to let sift by. Pearl Jam has always been the soundtrack of my life, from when I was 14 or 15 and got the CD when living in the transition house in Mission, right on through. As with all of my relationships there have been long lulls. Excepting maybe Trevor, this relationship has been longer than any of my non-family relationships.
And oh, do I ever have need of understanding, of long relatinships, of knowing what to hold onto and what to let sift by right now! I'm doing... fine. I'm going to work, I'm not looking for an interesting new job, I'm not engaging the world really, I'm paring down twitter and paying my rent and dealing with bills and arguing with my boyfriend sometimes and not other times. I'm doing the minimum necessary to feed myself, keep cages clean, keep things from rotting on the countertops.
I'm not thriving.
I don't know if this is post-school lull, where I've been told what to do for so long that I need to rebuild my own initiative and decision-making faculties. I don't know if it's depression, maybe from a brief and soon-discontinued foray into birth control pills (BAD IDEA) or just on its own. I don't know if it's plain conditioning, being in a relationship where the things that feed me make my partner unhappy so often. I don't know if it's just me, lazy or on a low bit.
I do know I'm in the birth canal again, and the contractions are not at all comfortable, and it seems I won't be whatever I will become for a little while yet. It's the waiting space. It's, if you like, the dead space-- but death feeds everything, it powers the way things turn and turn again, and it enables life to build and rebuild on itself, attaining unexpected complexities.
I'm writing. Right here, typing words onto a (ugh) slightly sticky keyboard. Do you know how good that feels? And no, he's not in the house. And no, he doesn't know I'm home. I can't call this into being by saying, 'can you go play boardgames on Tuesday, honey? I need the house to myself'. It has to happen by itself. And it hasn't been, because he's been unemployed for so freaking long, and before that I was in school.
And I'm thinking, does this mean I'm doing it wrong? Is this why I'm not chiming internally, singing and bumping ideas into each other and taking up space? Is it because he's around so much? If so, what do I do, or do I just become this quieter, less-thinking person and roll into it? Does it mean I shouldn't move in with him, or not with anyone? Or is it something to do with externals and not the relationship at all? Mom said, a long time ago, that she worried I used my relationships to inform too much of my self. Is that what I'm doing? Losing my own self for his?
I just don't fucking know. So my brain is alternately chugging in the background and churning LOUDER THAN ANYTHING ELSE on this. And that's that.
I'll get those cages clean now.
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no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 03:58 am (UTC)It sounds like there is stress coming at your life from several corners right now. Taking time to write it out is such a balm. I hope to see you do it more often.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-15 05:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-17 04:14 am (UTC)do I ever have need of understanding, of long relatinships [...] Losing my own self
Around the second or third year, we started to realize we were adopting curious habits: trying too hard to do everything together, burying ourselves in one another, and in being a couple, and then simultaneously reacting (without discussing it) by carving out private activities (places, friends, passtimes) we did not even tell one another about, because our minds needed the breathing room and we didn't know how to articulate the need. And feeling guilty and shitty about it because it was both un-discussed and, due to that, unsatisfying.
I know this much: long relationships involve a protracted exploration, negotiation and sometimes struggle about finding the correct distance for both of you, the correct balance of being part of one another, and being separate. It's what they are all about.
I went to a wedding this summer in Manning park, for a couple who had already been living together a decade or so. They chose Gibran's piece on marriage as their reading, which I found pleasingly self-assured. They already knew the storms they'd be sailing in.