Inwarding

[greenstorm]

There's a day in my cycle every month where I want to do lots of cleaning. We're going into winter and I'm spending actual time indoors. And folks are coming to tear apart the chimney, theoretically, and replace it.

So I've been overhauling the house. I had to take down the bookshelves that were up against the chimney. My livingroom isn't really big enough to leave the bookshelves sitting around. So I am rearranging the pantry to hold my bookshelves, putting my boxed books away in a closet, moving the kitchen shelving that's in front of the windows into the pantry so I can finally hang my curtains, taking the folding table out of the pantry, and maybe moving one bookshelf up into my bedroom for the farm reference books I'll be using in the next little while, like my butchery and sausagemaking books.

I should also probably go through all my canning and make sure the lids are all still sealed.

Right now everything is chaos but I'm happy to be working on a more useable space. This home is beautiful but not super useable -- the rooms are barely big enough to put beds in, and the walls are gothic-arch curved so shelves can't go up against them. Over time I'm developing strategies that work better for me.

In other news Tucker and I are working through a communication... course? together recommended by his therapist. The fact that it's voice rather than reading is a bit of a challenge since neither of us receive into that way particularly well. I don't really believe that any one set of tools is the Right One, but having a mutually agreed upon way of communicating about concepts is helpful. My hope is this will give that to us. I don't know how optimistic to be about it; I think he's starting to slide down back into his depression from before the trip and that brings in a more defeatist mindset overall. On the other hand he's still participating and he's definitely still making significant efforts to be kind and supportive of my feelings.

We definitely hit a bump this weekend anyhow. We've been pausing to chat about the course as we go through it and yesterday we got back into the original issue (I'm still reading it as "is it ok for me to have strong emotions in his presence" though I'm hoping that's a misread and waiting on clarification still) and I expressed that I'm still having some waves of reluctance/anger/etc from the last couple years of the relationship where he wasn't communicating with me, and that even though he's communicating now I'll probably keep having those emotions pop up once in awhile and I don't think there's away to just make them go away-- they'll fade over time as he keeps showing up. He doesn't want to have been told about that periodic nor to have been (and possibly ever be?) made aware of it. I started speaking from a place of anger, stopped what I was saying, and explained that this anger wasn't about anything he was doing right now but that it would come and go and he shouldn't take it personally, it was just a feeling I'd have sometimes. He was not ok with that.

So I'm struggling to know what he thinks I should have done.

My emotions are big and loud and all-consuming in my head, it's where the storm in Greenstorm comes from. From all the counseling and reading and whatever I've done it seems that non-traumatized neurotypical people, when their emotions get big and they get disregulated, they are "supposed to"(?) be able to do some grounding and breathing exercises and the physiological responses go away and they can go back to the subject fairly soon and maybe need to take a couple breaks to re-regulate but pretty much can continue. One of the things that convinces me that my brain isn't wired that way is that I can't do that.

If I talk or write my way through something I can become ok over a course of several hours to a day. If I do nothing the intense physiological response subsides after about 2 hours but if I approach the topic again I'm right back in it in slowly subsiding 2-hour waves for the next several days to weeks. If I try to do breathing and grounding exercises designed to get me into my body I experience extreme pain and what feels pretty much like a kind of death of self. This is what I understand to be an autistic meltdown. I *can* ground externally, go outside and let my mind disappear into the land and feel more ok, but I can't come back to the subject for awhile while I'm doing that still and I can only do it in tiny glimpses, like exposure therapy, over many days, before I can come back to it.

That is to say, if I'm feeling angry my options seem to be to talk about it and maybe it'll subside in ten or twenty minutes or to withdraw and do journaling or to withdraw for a long time and let it subside. Now, I'm not saying that talking about it looks like yelling or being mean; it's explaining what my internal story and pain points are, basically describing the emotion properly, invoking the narrator to channel the internal experience instead of necessarily living it.

Anyhow, we'll no doubt get into that together more later but it derailed the course this weekend. I had to sit through a couple hours of that internal storm before it subsided, I had to die and come back again.

It's kind of amazing to think that other people don't have this kind of mind. I'm envious of that in so many ways, but it's also a relief to know that it's not just that I suck at regulation. It's genuinely a different experience for me. I remember my mom being bewildered about the whole thing when I was a kid and trying different things to get me to calm down; I quickly learned to put on a perfectly normal and pleasant face while I was in meltdown, to not admit or show any sign of it. Folks who require that of me are not my friends. Not talk about it or process with that person verbally? Sure. Take physical space apart? Sure. Reassure someone that it's my mind doing stuff and probably isn't personal, so they shouldn't take it too seriously? Sure. But not to express that I have the emotion at all, either by word or tone or expression, while still maintaining the facade of physical and emotional intimacy? Nope.

I'm still in it a little bit. Luckily I'm home alone, it's quiet, and I can turn my hand back to work and cleaning.

Comments

[yarrowkat]

i keep thinking of a time in my life when a breakup shredded me so hard that i couldn't regulate my emotions, and i went on like that for a couple of months before finally getting a handle on myself and starting to find my internal balance. i could shove it aside to get work done at the office and on the farm, but it was a constant state for most of that autumn. that this period stands out in this way for me highlights what you are saying about the different ways people experience emotions.

to be told not to give any indication that this storm is happening, sounds extremely difficult at best. to not necesarily discuss it constantly, sure. but to not even by word or deed suggest that it is happening? ouch. that seems unreasonable to me. it also seems very unhelpful that he is unwilling to even know that you have had this emotion, even though you're clearly not blaming him for it or making him responsible for it. like, how can you each communicate fully and from a place of integrity if there are whole parts of your inside landscape that he is unwilling to know exist? i hope he comes to see that and learns to accept it.

[greenstorm]

I'm not sure that's what he's asking, and if it is then I can't do it. I suspect he's reacting to how hard it is for him to set a boundary and say "hey, not right now" when I'm upset. He's never in his life felt safe communicating from a place of integrity before and it's happening like the ice sheets melting now-- suddenly very fast but there are still icebergs all over the place. Very interested to see how it all turns out, honestly.

I'm looking forward to having my happy emotions back more often. They're also difficult to regulate and when my life is done right it kind of balances.

[yarrowkat]

i hope my read is incorrect and he is asking something else, something possible. and i hope for you that it turns out very well for you both! that ice sheet metaphor is lovely; i can feel exactly how that would go in a relationship. whew. i hope further for Tucker's sake that he discovers that communicating safely from his integrity feels good for his soul and he learns it as a new pattern.

[greenstorm]

Yes! Or maybe he's asking that but when he thinks about it a bit he decides he doesn't want a relationship where someone might always be hiding from him that they're upset with him. That kind of relationship would really worry me, anyhow. He seems to be learning it as a new pattern but like any new pattern it's-- how do you fit in all the pieces around the new bit? Like, when you are able to say what you want, how do you know what to do with wanting things?

I'm so super proud of him, its a very impressive place to have got to. Whatever happens I think we're better off with it than without it, even if the relationship changes a lot.

I also can do with some learning on this part of the process, the "stated what we want, what now" part.

[yarrowkat]

for sure! it's an amazing place to be in the journey. making the actual changes that you know you want is always the hardest part. terra and i are struggling with that, too.

[greenstorm]

You must be! Sharing so much space & incidental contact is such a big change.

[yarrowkat]

i think it would feel different if we wanted to cohabitate as a next step in our relationship. since we/i really don't want that, but we're doing this for the farm, the difficulty is dialed up.

after discussing it at house meeting last week, Terra is now actively looking for a camper or some kind of tiny house situation that ze can afford. we decided on an interim parking spot for a camper or a tiny house (different spots), and ze's going to view a couple options tomorrow. ze'll refrain from rushing into the wrong thing, but it's actively moving forward with the idea now. it's a relief.

[greenstorm]

Goodness, yes, it always feels so much better to be moving towards a solution than just... waiting for it. I seem to remember there was an original plan where ze was going to get a camper or something, is this a shift in the timeline?

[yarrowkat]

yes, this is the original plan, just bumped up from "some vauge time after Terra is confirmed as a Steward" to "as soon as it is reasonable to do the infrastructure work and find a housing situation." since our process is lengthy, and Terra can't be confirmed until the 2023 Retreat, that felt like an awful lot of waiting. (i might introduce a modification to our process at this retreat - one that allows us to do a one-off additional retreat specifically for the purpose of confirming new stewards one year after their arrival, rather than waiting for the next regularly scheduled retreat following the completion of that year. it would depend on everybody agreeing to the change, and i could see T in particular resisting it as it gives us less time to change our minds on this big decision - but we'll see.)

[greenstorm]

Oof, yes, that would be an awfully long time to wait. I'm glad there's agreement around other options.

[yarrowkat]

Terra has financing about halfway figured out, and the next step is going to some RV lots and looking around. so we're getting that onto the calendar, and bringing Rev for his vision and his smarts around those things - and because salespeople listen to men, lol.

[greenstorm]

It sounds like ze is (ze's?) looking for something mobile specifically? Or is it just cheaper/faster to get a self-contained system that way?

[yarrowkat]

(ze's, yes) cheaper/faster, for sure.  and presents fewer infrastructure/logistical issues in terms of where to put it on the farm and how to make it happen.  though "cheap" is not nearly as true as it would have been a few years ago, with rents skyrocketing and everybody choosing RVs and tinyhomes and Airstreams because they can't afford a house - demand has really shot up.  Christos bought his (very nice, nearly new) Airstream two years ago for 40k, and now even after 2 years of constant use, it's worth 65k.  so that's kinda wild.  but Terra's finding some pretty good looking options in the 10-15k range, and financing is mostly sorted after more thought, so something will work out.

[greenstorm]

Ooof, yes. See also: land in the country with no amenities (water/sewage) to put said RV on. Also: realizing that living on land with no amenities is expensive but being trapped by choices you've made to get there and the intense romanticization of that lifestyle. So much of it going around.

I look forward to hearing about what ze ends up in.

[yarrowkat]

yeah, i'm definitely hearing a lot of stories from wwoofers along the lines of "i tried vanlife for a year with my girlfriend and it broke us up and also it basically really sucks 80% of the time because you have like 8 square feet of personal space and gas is expensive," etc.  i think the way vanlife is getting presented on instagram etc is maybe harmful, as it's so romantiziced that reality could never actually live up to it.  and what happens when your van breaks down and it was your entire house? which happened to Jarvis this summer. (he bounced back, but he had us to come land with, which i think made his situation a lot better than it could have been for someone less resourced.)

[greenstorm]

Like every. Single. Thing. folks with a lot of resources for backup are good when things go wrong, and folks who are on the margins trying to convince themselves it's ok because other people are doing it fine and it will be fun are not good when things go wrong. There's just no silver bullet replacement for having a strong social safety net.

Yay for you being one for some folks, boo for the necessity for it.

[yarrowkat]

we do what we can to improve the world, right?  being that place for a few people is something we can do.  but FOR REAL about the social safety net issue. which goes back to your post today about healthy ecosystems being the best apocalypse insurance - that's as true interpersonally as it is in terms of plant/animal ecology.

[greenstorm]

Yes. I admittedly wash my hands of that problem by saying I'm an expert in plant systems and that people systems aren't my forte, but human-created plant systems exist inside the container of human culture, which can either support them or strangle them, and which determine what inputs are available and what outputs are valuable. It's vital. It's just... hard.