Greenstorm's Journal

I woke up at 4 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I came upstairs and sorted out my corn to soak before planting. Two dozen varieties will be put in seperately:

Flints: Gaspe, Homestead Yellow, Saskatchewan Rainbow, Saskatoon White, Assiniboine Flint, Floriani, Atomic Orange, Cascade Ruby Gold, New York Flint.

Dents: Oaxacan Green, Early Riser, Open Oak Party.

Flours: Painted Mountain x4, Papas Blue, Oregon Blue, Montana Morado, Mandan Lavender Parching, Starburst Manna, Magic Manna, Creamcap Manna.

Morden

It's a delight and a privilege to work with them. I was wondering why, then, I'm feeling so off-- why I can't sleep, why it brings me up to ok but not into full joy.

Part of the answer is physical discomfort, whatever's going on with that. I've been in pain before, though, and it isn't always so affecting.

But the real answer is probably that the significant de-escalation with Tucker, which has been going on slowly for awhile now, is real now. We still touch base everyday but there just hasn't been the same level of connection woven through for me, and I suspect in future that feeling of connection will come and go with visits or significant events that prompt a bunch of talking. It's become one of my distance relationships instead of a major daily source of care.

Couple that with the misfire with J, where I've gained a friend but because of the way things started there's not pure gratitude for that because it's mixed with disappointment that he won's also be a lover, and I'm just--

You know, mourning endings is a thing. Poly has generally meant that when something ends there's someone around to care for me and get me through the tough time, but it's also meant that I don't slow down emotionally as much as I might. I still want to be a little available to partners, to not sink into that feeling that relationships can never go well that always comes right after for a bit. I don't really have to keep myself open in that way right now, though.

And then again, my routines have been super destabilized. I don't see Tucker regularly anymore, that whole schedule is disrupted. Fieldwork is starting at work so I'm in the office on pretty random days. J isn't much of a scheduler so those visits have been ad-hoc and not laid into my schedule predictably or in advance. Josh and Tucker are busy, again available pretty randomly so I can't quite just reach out when I want and I can't quite settle into routine communication. Even the farm is switching from winter chores to summer chores.

So it makes sense this time would be rough for me. And even as I write this, as I'm parsing through what's going on, my pain level is distracting enough that I suspect it probably is impacting me more than I think. They're going to drop a camera in there and take a look around; fingers crossed they find something easily fixable and this whole thing can be resolved.

I was going to say, at least I'm eating again, but I think that may have been the issue: my body doesn't want to introduce food into that whole situation because it hurts. I haven't really consistently eaten so poorly for so long before and it was really messing with my ability to think, so hopefully I can keep this up.

My heart hurts.

Josh and I are deciding whether we will stay together; he wants to be friends, ditch the sex, and keep the rest of intimacy n steady-state, or rather, when he's available. I need a minimum of in-person time to avoid cometing, and am not super happy at the idea of "it'll be hard for me to find a relationship if we keep having sex so let's stop the sex and keep everything else". I'll likely need a year or two off contact to let bitterness subside and hurt heal. Nothing is finalized yet, but there aren't too many options with him down there.

This is probably the most respectful, talked-through breakup I've had.

And in the middle of this I'm thinking about how to handle stuff with Tucker. He came up here and the idea was we'd get to see each other more and spend more time together. However, in the last 2 months we've spent only 3 full days together and assorted after-work evenings, and one of those days was discussing the poly date trip he's on right now. It's been a long time since we've had a relaxed, loving day where no one has to run off to do something. So I'm taking a look a what I need out of a mostly full-time relationship, I'm looking at what I'd be ok with as not full-time, and I'm feeling so. Tired.

I'm tired of second-guessing myself: do I feel distant and lonely because my mind is playing tricks on me, or because I'm not getting what I need out of these relationships? I'm tired of holding boundaries and having folks skate close to the edge and being reasonable about it and bringing it up politely and having it only be noticed when I get visibly upset.

I'm tired of being upset. I'm tired of being the one with a list of possible solutions. I guess I can step back on that role and see what happens.

And I'm tired of breakups, I'm tired of loving people and them passing out of my life, I'm even tired of people being in my life right now. I want to lie down on the first bits of grass and outside sink into the soil. I want nothing to do with humans and I want nothing to do with people who don't know what they want, or who say they want one thing and then aim their life at something quite different.

I have 17 apple trees, 7 plum trees, and a couple apricots to plant this spring. I have some birches and burr oaks to plant around the edges and wild spaces. There is nothing in the world anywhere better than planting a tree. Nothing. I have several dozen haskaps and some sour cherries to put into the ground. I may have piglets soon; I have goslings and will have some more, and maybe some ducklings.

That's where my soul is, in those trees. It isn't with people. Work can be engaging but mostly lately it's just ridiculous, no one at the top can make up their mind so everything gets redone and nothing can be planned; we're a week from the start of field season and no one knows what they're doing. My heart is no longer there.

Josh was the first person I met who really likes plants. He kept them in his dorm at BCIT, and when I woke up the first morning at his house all the plant lights were on timers and came up one after the other in the livingroom, on placed carefully and lovingly over each plant.

That house is sold now. The lights are moved to his next house, in Vancouver.

Oh, self, I am so so sorry. Someday maybe you will be seen again in that place, though never quite the same way.

Remember when I said things were starting to move again?

Well, they're howling along.

Josh is moving away. Tucker moved up here. Someone I was seeing last summer has, I think, gone no-contact without a heads-up not too many days after saying "hey, let's be friends, you know you can talk to me about things if they're rough".

My neighbours a couple down, from I think 2 houses, came over drunk at 10pm and yelled that they would shoot my dog if he was on their property again.

I taught a soap workshop to some friends and it was fun. My ossabaw pigs have arrived from 1000km and 2 ferries away. I'm starting to separate birds into breeding pens. The hard cold broke (for now) and instead of -20 and -30 last night was a balmy -10. The new pigs barely had to snuggle into the straw to keep warm except for the tiny 8-week-old boar.

Between the dogs and the pigs I expect I'll have some intellectual challenges; "no fence-breaking ever" is a much tougher bar than "occasional fence-breaking" and it means I have to be smarter, and have contingencies, for everything. Complicating things, electric fence has a tendency to make my type of dogs aggressive (their mind is wired to make them try to drive away threats and harms, so if they get hurt when they go up to the fence, and they go up to the fence when there are people/pigs/cars, then they associate people/pigs/cars with harm. That can be deadly).

I had a really hard weekend for mental health this weekend. I was basically paralyzed for a day except for the stuff I really needed to do to get the pigs' stuff ready. There were a couple triggers going on - yelling and threats of violence are definitely difficult for me to handle, and this is the first time that's happened on my property. I want to navigate the no-contact thing with respect for this person's consent, and I'd also like to know what's going on; if I try every avenue to contact him when he clearly doesn't want to be contacted I'm definitely violating his indicated wishes, but at the same time I kind of expect him to pop up in the future and say "you didn't try hard enough to contact me, I guess you didn't really care". That, of course, hits the "if you really loved me you would perform it in X way [usually by having no other partners]" button. And then I fucked up my shoulder and I was getting pigs and I had to rely on Tucker to help assemble the pig barn, which is hard. I hate relying on other people for a project that is honestly mine, it makes me feel inadequate. Animals are a lot of work and other people shouldn't need to do stuff for me just because I want to keep them.

On the other hand I had that nice workshop, Tucker is settled in enough that I could go to his place to visit, we had some lovely date time, it's getting warmer, and I'm making progress at work. Tucker and I agreed to wear each others' necklaces for another year, I guess sort of like a handfasting? and we talked a bunch abotu stuff. I also improvised an amazing chicken-rose pasta sauce and my dogs still love me. The baby boar is ultra cute, which will be a challenge since I can't have him getting touchy-feely which means I can't snuggle him. I have some time on my own coming up next week so I can write, sew, and talk to the animals.

But I was definitely nonfunctional on Sunday, and I think it's time to get more serious about dealing with that.

Josh has taken the job. He'll be back in Van, 12 hours away, instead of the somewhat-driveable 5 hours he was before. His hours won't be as flexible so he won't be able to come up here on weekends; he was up here about once a month in the last year.

It was a hard decision for him; very decidedly work he liked vs lifestyle he wanted. He chose work. I sort of always knew he would, but.

It hurts.

The strength of us, and the joy, was in doing projects together. His hands are all over my farm (someone gave me the word "smallholding" the other day and I think I should use it instead of farm). That's the same as saying they're all over my heart and all over my ideas of the future. If he doesn't come up, and if he's living in a little box down there with all his stuff in storage, well. Even if I go down there won't be projects. Making something together with someone- I don't do that much. It's intimate. It's rare to meet a person who fits me in that way.

And of course every unique thing about him, the way he sharpens his kitchen knives and the - oh, I can't do it right now. It's all going through my head and I will miss him so much. And I'm supposed to be working. Fuck poly and the inability to communicate that someone can be completely, uniquely important and it can be awful to lose them even at the same time as someone else is differently important and something with them is gained.

Gods, it /hurts/.

This is the part where nothing has any meaning and it doesn't seem to be worth it to keep going through the motions. All those plants and seeds I have ordered for spring? He's the only one who can appreciate them. He had plant lights in his dorm room in school. Everyone else loves plants as a means to an end - sustainability, local food, health, whatever. He loves them like I do.

Guess it's time to do some work.

I can't even hate this. It just hurts.

You've held me for years now. I came to you in the dark, going into winter, and it's coming out of winter into the chinese new year, the one set during the first real feel of spring, that I'll leave you.

There were days in there where I thought we'd never leave but just go on wearing our comfortable habits each into each until we fit perfectly. I've never been the only person who gets to make that choice, though.

People come and go and come again and go, again. My moods, my goals, my desires: they shift and double down on themselves and fade like cream just poured into coffee, swirling and spinning and blending finally one into the other. You are distinct from those. You've been there when I've wanted you, protective and never startling, a shell to keep the storms and the bright sun off in equal measure when shelter was needed. You've been there when I would have rejected you. When I doubted my own sufficiency you challenged me and, when I met that challenge, gave me something at least I could do well enough in my life for someone or something.

I am never too much for you, nor too little. I never worry that I'll do or say something wrong in regards to you, because you are supremely mine in a way no person can be. We dress up together sometimes, or dress down and have a party, maybe with friends and waffles and cartoons or maybe just with tea and muffins as the rising sun crawls through the room.

I know your secrets, you see. I know how at certain times of year, when the sun is low and there is so much dark in the world, you let light all the way inside just for a few minutes every morning to dance across the furthest recesses of your kitchen. I know how during the summer you hunker down and barely let the high sun in at all, but shoot strong cool breezes at that one courtyard window that will chill down the whole house if I work with you. I know the knocking sound of your fireplace starting up and the ticking of gas feeding the flames and the way pools of warm and cool air collect, each in its own room.

I can walk through you at night with my eyes closed and never miss a step.

But: you have always been another's, and it is to that other you will return. My beer and bookshelves will vanish, replaced by her potpourri scents and framed photos. Your kitchen will fall silent. You will recede into memory, fading finally into part of the person who comes after me as you are part of me now. I in turn will go on and fit my skin into another space, will bless another set of walls with my music and my tears, will expand into another shell that will eventually hold me as you do now.

Thank you for everything. You have been very good to me. May it go as well for us both as it has so far, if not better.

I still feel it peeking around the edges. It comes when it's inconvenient: when I'm in a crowd of strangers stuck on a rush-hour skytrain, when someone who would be inconvenienced by my breaking down is speaking of something altogether else. I am, of course, a fucking world champion of stoneface when I need to be. I spent many years breaking down that skill, living outside of it, and now a year or two of practice and it's walled me inside.

Inside, outside, apart. I don't know. Metaphor breaks down and I am apart from myself.

I sometimes use music as a tool to break through this. I have not done that. When I had finished the tattoo sitting and Angus came in and I was worn out from resisting the pain I knew it would break when I looked up into his face (so warm! and I can be so, so cold) and it did, but only for a moment.

I think I am avoiding it. I am avoiding some people, for sure, because I'm afraid of being inconvenient. My pain very much wants to be inconvenient, it wants to be a storm or a flood and it won't thus far be contained in a quiet room where I can sit patiently and wait it out.

I find myself fantasizing about a good top who cares about my well-being, someone who could draw the pain out of me (it wouldn't take very much; physical pain is a very open gateway here. I amost broke down in the doctor's office when she drew blood) and revel in the process, who could a big enough, sure enough safe space to contain the storm the first time until it passed a little. I have even thought of asking some people.

But while my pain wants to be inconvenient, I do not. And. I. Feel. Inconvenient.

I guess that's my word right there. Other people don't like to be called bad, or wrong, or irresponsible, or whatever that trigger is that's been built into them. This is the trigger that's been built into me surfacing right now.

It occurs to me that I should think of ways I'd like to feel, words of power for myself. I've been trying during these last two paragraphs to think. I don't want to be necessary, helpful, needed, not even really desired. But-- wanted. I want to be wanted. I want to be liked. I want to be cared-for and cherished. Interesting comes and goes. Correct I reject wholeheartedly. Admired? Yes. I like being fascinated by myself, but not fascinating. I like feeling interconnected, I can tolerate feeling self-sufficient (that is where I'm sliding, these days).

And, I like to feel... sufficient. Enough. For everyone, myself included and especially.

Wanted and sufficient. I'll think about that more later, but for now I will feed myself like a good girl and go curl up under the protection of Kynnin, he who has loved me longest and knows as much about my history as anyone. I am enough for him as I am, and he will not allow me to be inconvenient. So there we are. Maybe I will even, finally, be able to cry a little.

Blake and I broke up on Friday night. He was drunk enough that I felt I had to check in the morning to make sure he remembered. It had been coming for awhile, obviously, but I was hoping it would be a transition rather than a breakup. It still may be. I'm afraid that the timing might break that, or at least delay it. He's been really hurt by my poly-ness, and I'm not feeling like keeping it really under wraps for the rest of the month, till he moves out. I'm not talking about bringing anyone home to the house or anything, but...

...last night was my first overnight date in maybe a year or more? Out of the house for the night, not worried about or checking in with anyone (well, worried about Blake, but I can't imagine contacting him while I'm away would help anything). Also my first new sex partner in over two years. It was fun, and strange, much like you'd expect an unusual experience to be. I'd forgotten how much opacity there is in newness. I'd forgotten what it was like to touch someone as a surface, as I'm still learning to read them, before the skin is merely as close as you can come to the familiar light within. But that's not why I'm here.

I'm here because I'm thinking hard about what happened. I'm here because I don't want to forget, but remembering is so heavy.

He said some things, Friday night, that were terrible. He was in a lot of mental pain, and drunk, and he chose to say terrible things to me. He knew, because we were intimate because I had confided in him, what would hurt me, so he said it. I think at the time he believed it, and it sounded a lot like what my crazybrain tells me in the middle of a bad episode. You don't need to know what he said.

But that moment was the culmination of a very long time of his feeling awful about my doing poly, but assuring me that he wanted me to stay in the relationship and would become ok with it eventually, and of my believing him and still staying with him. I tried reducing my frequency of dates (one every three months!) in the hopes that it would take some pressure off, but it didn't. He could have admitted it sucked for him and left at any time, and I thought hey, as an adult he has a right to decide what amount of discomfort he wants to stay through, and when he will leave. But here's the thing.

He was not enthusiastically consenting to my being poly. And seen in that light, with consent seen not as mouthing of words but as a consistent set of supportive actions and behaviours, he was not consenting. And I was accepting the one in exchange for the other because... well, for reasons that I no longer will, I think. I have been there before, I don't want to be there again. And again. And again. But also I don't want to be there again because I'm tired of hurting people by being with them, just by existing as myself.

I have a network of people who love me enough to ask about my other people sometimes, to be happy for me when I'm happy with them. That's a network of friends/lovers that proves I can still include sex in an intimate dynamic without totally alienating people, even if the relationships are cyclic or rarefied or erratic. I can hold onto those people, lovers and friends, and know that what I want is coming from them, so it's not impossible to find in other people. I don't need to settle for grudging consent.

And by all the gods, I need to remember that.

This is going to be a hard couple of weeks. Unsurprising, because when something like this happens the interim always is. Except for late at night my mind can ice itself down, all frozen stone, but my concentration and motivation are still not good. Some assignments that should be relatively easy for school are a struggle.

At night I feel bereft.

I have decisions to make: do I give notice? How can I afford everything?

Spring is coming hard. Buds are opening. I'd like to go for a bike ride and be happy. I'd like to hole up alone in my house and not see anyone except for the folks at school. People take care of me sometimes.

Right now, this moment, I wish I didn't love anyone.

Angus keeps talking about how he screwed up so badly I can't forgive him, or something. At one point I had enough energy to try to tell him that wasn't the point, that I could forgive him anything if he could just godfuckingdamn take the fuck care of himself, if he could work even half as hard to make his life a decent place for him to live as he did at bearing misery. He doesn't understand.

He's angry at me as well, understandably.

The world would be a better place if fewer people bore their misery well. Self-sacrifice is pointed in the wrong directions. It should be used to make things better, not to maintain a bad status quo.

The first green leaves are out on my apple trees on the porch. Enough years of love and it will produce fruit for me. What do you say to that?

I haven't yet begun to feel like a failure for this. I haven't given myself time to think. Life has helped me not to think.

Well. Nothing more to say right now.

Everything you know about the world is a lie. Everything you know about yourself is a lie. You tell yourself these lies (you call them stories) to make the world seem explicable.

The world is not explicable. It can be packaged, wrapped, sent, received, and exclaimed over but we are only pretending that the world at the end of the process has a connection to the world at the beginning.

You won't get at the truth of things. You know that. You don't even really try most of the time. You won't get a valid explanation. But you also won't get meaning if you don't make meaning here.

Greenie, your life is stories. You tell others stories and that's how you communicate. You tell yourself stories and that's how you think. Right now your story is that, seven days ago nearly to the hour he told you that you were too much time and energy for him to deal with, that he was quickly losing interest, and that he spit you out of his life like squeezing the soap in the shower and you went careening off and bouncing against the walls. Now you lie over the drain, eroding.

Right now your story is that he's still too goddamn walled off to deal with real help so when he asked you to go over and snuggle -- after telling you he would not do the same for you -- he was taking advantage of you and he's a bit of a jerk for that.

You've got a simultaneous story running. That story is about connection. That's the story where you are a strand in a web, and everyone else is also a strand in that web. That story is where when one person goes down the other strands take the pressure for that person, the net flexes and eventually rebounds. That story is where you are a strand that does not break.

In your third story you're hanging from fraying ropes and he's just handed you an anvil.

You've had so many stories where in the end the hero rides off into the sunset and is never sen again unless you steal a horse and frantically chase after, leaving your own life behind. You've had so many stories where distance is the last sentence. In your stories of yourself you're not interesting enough to keep people nourishing you. In your stories of yourself you demand too much and people go away and they are never close to you again. You don't trust yourself to live a story where you maintain connection without sacrifice.

You don't believe life happens without sacrifice. You believe some sacrifices are much more pleasant than others.

Your lie to yourself is that, because you like someone or find them valuable in your life, that it means something. That's where you find your meaning. Your experience, though, is that how you feel towards people maybe isn't based on anything reciprocal at all. It's not based on their innate goodness for you or their ability to compliment your strengths or teach you things from the way they move through their lives. Your experience is that people come and go and you have no control over that regardless of how much or how little of yourself you give.

You would find it morally repugnant to be emotionally closed to a friend for more than a month or two. You open around people and there's no help for that. God knows you've tried. But also, in a world where you manufacture your own meanings, there is nothing wrong with that. You think that if you call this one way or the other instead of rolling with it you'll lose it, but the liklihood is that you'll lose it anyhow. That's always been the story. You might as well lose it so that you can write meaning into the story.

I understand, though, that then we'd just be writing the same story we've written before: the story where in order to get someone to engage on some level you threaten to go away otherwise. That's the story where you're demanding, the other person is acceding because they don't want to lose you in their lives completely, where you're leveraging any power you have. That's a terrible story and it makes you feel bad. It makes us feel bad.

These are strange seas. I see you're drowning. I guess I'm not much help. I'm not much of a liar. I sat down to write you a brightly-coloured lifesaver to throw you and we've ended up with this swirl of ashy confusion. You can taste the grit between your teeth and it gets in your throat and chokes each gulp of air.

People say it gets better, and it will get better, but you so badly want to live each moment of your life. You don't want to passively wait through it. I understand that. I also understand that sometimes pain and loss is too much, it's just... too much. You've been fantasizing about cauterization lately, about just going in with focus and burning each memory our as painfully as possible until it's all gone. You want it gone. You won't want to have lost it, though.

I'm no help. I have no answers. I'm just the other side on your mental debate on this and it's clear that writing me down doesn't make anything more obvious except that we are, in fact, confused and in pain.

I guess I should stop answering you now. I don't want to, though. It's lonely with no one to talk to.

More bitter.

He said I took up too much time and energy, which is fair, but oh how it hurts that he's done so many of the things I loved about him and wanted to talk with about him in the how many hours since the chop, and he hadn't done them for so long before, and I can't talk to him about it. More than anything I just wanted to be able to talk.

...well, that and his fingerprints all over me from time to time.