I don't know how to say this

[greenstorm]

But I've had so many worse years than 2020.

The years I was in university were worse, especially when I was also trying to recover from my big car accident and didn't realize I had a concussion.

The year I got pregnant over Christmas while working a bunch of different cobbled-together jobs and went to the hospital with a high fever and abdominal pain, then got chewed out by the doctor in the hospital for not being on hormonal birth control ("it makes me suicidal" "that doesn't matter, without it you'll die of breast cancer") and moving twice and maybe there was a breakup in there? was worse.

The year I got kicked out of living with mom and couldn't support myself and moved to a very suburby place and still couldn't support myself and was out of bus range to visit anyone I knew and together with the person I lived with who was paying for my housing we were doing our first major poly was worse.

The years I lived with my dad after my brother died were worse. Tose years were so much worse.

I'm very lucky right now, sitting here waiting for my jars of pasta sauce to cool and my jars for applesauce to sanitize, in a house I own that I may conceivably be able to keep owning through the next several years if the stars align, with life projects that most days feel like they matter to the world and with people who love me and though many of them may be far away some are not.

And I think covid is helping me to realize I don't really like travel much anyways. I'd rather people came to me. Ha.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

i know it's a lot of work, but there are definitely ways in which i envy your situation, living alone in your own place in the woods, making your own decisions about what to focus on, what to take on, all the things. and not having to depend on anybody else to fundamentally make it work.

we literally could not have what we do without the whole crowd of us, and while there are many ways in which I deeply love the life i have made, the one thing i really miss is living alone.

i am glad you are satisfied and (i think? from what i read here?) mostly happy in your life.

[greenstorm]

I envy my situation, and it's mine! Anyone in remotely similar situations seems to have a kind of fallback that I don't: parents going to die and leave them an inheritance eventually, they got the land through family in the first place, whatnot. The choice to move at least a ten hour drive from every human I'd ever met was the big trade-off, it also pretty much rendered my social currency up till the move meaningless. I've been surprised at the ramifications of that.

But the gain from this trade-off was that I can go outside and do something and not have to consult about it. I can choose who I see from day to day, who's allowed on my property at all, without having a discussion about it. I can come home with a goose or pigs, I can buy several dozen haskap plants, I can change my workplans, and there's no one to dispute me.

It's something I really needed.

I think being happy in my life is a skill I've always had, maybe learned in the Bad Times with dad. I feel like I'm happier in my life than most people I know.

I'm glad you have what you do. It sounds like there's an extra-lot of pressure on your interpersonal with covid and maybe Alan's return? It does seem like you've made sanctuaries for yourself, which seems so important in those situations.

[yarrowkat]

ten hours from everybody is a big leap! i couldn't quite envision myself leaping that far - but owning my own place, alone, somewhere in the american Southwest, very possibly in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, even in the Abq South Valley neighborhood? TOTALLY. particularly because i'm really attached to my career at the University and so proximity to that would remain important in any scenario (except the one where it's the end of the world and UNM actually closes its doors and I no longer have my career). when i imagine what it would look like for me to do something independently, i am still imagining being in Abq or in the nearby mountains, but being alone. it's been a comforting mental place to inhabit lately.

as things stand, i certainly could not come home with a goose without that being an occasion for substantial group processing and planning and figuring-out. on the plus side, i'd have a group to help both figure it out and to do the work. (and, tbh, i can come home with any amount of plants any time and nobody even blinks, as long as i also have a plan for where to plant them that doesn't encroach on someone else's project space - but these are already well known to me, so that's not a hardship). on the down side, yeah, we're all under some real relational strain from the pandemic, and most especially from the idea of Alan's increasingly-imminent return. if i could keep all the rest and skip the whole "alan" part, i'd be quite content, honestly. well - i have some capacity for melancholy and discontent in nearly any situation, but i think i would be able to not dwell there.

but here we are, and my life is financially bound up with his in complex ways that make it very hard for me to break away, so i am working on making the best of it. the historical antecedants for this are broad and numerous, anyway. not that i love dwelling on that - but there's some comfort or reassurance or something like that in the thought that women before me for thousands of years have weathered much worse*, so i can do this.

*i mean, he's not abusive or anything like that. we're just no longer well suited to each other and prone to argument, and in political disagreement on too many fronts for me to feel that this is easily repaired.

[greenstorm]

In this case the move enabled my career -- up north is a great place to start a career or even just look for work, there are so few bodies up here to do anything. I can imagine how your career setup would be an enormous pull.

I too notice in myself-- not even capacity, but a certain minimum adversity that I will experience no matter how good the situation. So I choose situations with kinds of adversity I enjoy (bears! impromptu goose vetting! pushing to can veggies and get wood for the fireplace done all at once!) so that I don't create or seek kinds of adversity I don't enjoy (keeping jackass partners! feeling like life has no meaning for no reason! deciding to experiment with food sensitivities!).

Alan is such a recurring point of tension and use of energy in your posts, resurfacing over and again. Regardless of what happens with him I do hope you can find ways not to dwell in melancholy and discontent.

[yarrowkat]

that is a really interesting way to think of that, a minimum adversity. i am going to have to give that some thought, thank you!

and thank you. i hope we are able to find some balance. i think part of the issue for me currently is the uncertainty; it will be easier once it stablizes into whatever it's going to become, no matter *what* that is, though certainly i have hopes for what direction i can go with it.

[greenstorm]

The adversity thing was a bit of a revelation for me. It also fuelled a lot of personal growth because I'd rather sink the adversity into something useful rather than into tolerating something shitty or inventing something shitty.

As for uncertainty, that makes sense. It seems like you have the confidence/know yourself well enough that if a situation is actively bad for you, it won't be a stable one!