Greenstorm's Journal

This is my personal laptop. The keys feel different than my work laptop, smoother, more intimate. I've had this laptop for almost ten years now. I haven't opened it for a couple weeks or more, things have been busy, and sometimes I'll post updates here from my work computer.

This post requires intimacy and safety. I fed the animals and stacked a full rack of wood downstairs. Two cats are lined up next to me. I've put off writing about some things so long that I don't know where to begin.

When I came to Fort I was going to live in Fort forever. During the first wildfires, when I was evacuated to Josh's, I buried myself in the garden one night here in an internal ritual. There are so many parts of me that can never leave this land.

When I came here I thought of land as a primary relationship, I thought of it as the one that vetos or trumps all others. My human relationships were secondary. In many ways they still are. I was looking for a place to finally be still, to form roots, to sink myself into immobility which I understood to be stability.

Since then Josh moved to Vancouver and may well move to Arizona for a couple years for work. We talk more often than I talk to almost anyone else, sometimes more often than I talk to anyone else. He didn't come into this as poly, but he is willing to hold space for this relationship in anything he engages in going forward. I trust him to hold that space for me, partly because when he was with me he held that space for other people and continues to do so. That is a strong relationship and I lean heavily on it for support. It flexes and fluxes with our lives and I still feel I can rely on it. There may be years I don't see him at all? Those haven't happened yet.

Since then Tucker moved up here. First he came up here one week per month, then inverted that and got an apartment and went down to the coast one week per month. With covid he's barely been down at all. It was supposed to be information gathering, to see if he could live in Fort. It's been comfortable, which sounds like so little but means so much to me: incremental progress learning boundaries together, shared dinners, supportive touch and conversation. A couple weeks before covid he decided he couldn't live up here, but where else would anyone want to be during this time if not somewhere you can safely move around on the streets and go outside whenever you want without worry? So he slid underwater, we didn't talk about it despite some of my early proddings, and it rested there until he put an offer in on a condo in the city last week.

Understand that in my life I usually change quickly. I move along at such a rapid clip that few people can keep up with me, and one of the things I love in my current set of partners is their ability for personal growth themselves. I like dating people with qualities that impress and inspire me. It makes me feel less like a parent.

So anyhow, the offer on the condo was his way of bringing up that it was time to get those negotiations going again. I figured, after a year or two in this house, that I had another move in me. I've been here longer than I've lived anywhere since I was seventeen and some of the trauma of displacement has healed. I've learned, too, that my relationship to the land is as much a process as my relationship to people: it's not something I obtain and then have, but is instead something I do or else do not do.

Now comes a negotiation stage, except that neither of us know how to negotiate. So, we need to pick up those skills. Then I need to figure out: what do I need from a home? Can I actually share a house with someone or are we looking for multi-house solutions? What are my dealbreakers? What are dream-fulfillment bits? Is there a way to leverage coupleness into cheaper living? If we look at both of our lists of dealbreakers, is there an actual real place we can find to live that's ok with us? How will finances and relationship end work in any such situation, including combined situations? If we look at our lists of joybringers, can we find a situation that contains those for both of us? How many towns in BC have a gaming store and nearby acreage anyhow? Should we move to Scotland and leverage the commonwealth country job opportunities? How important is living closer to Josh, or to my other friends in Nanaimo and Sechelt? Is there somewhere in BC where winter isn't solid mud and also where it isn't -40C? How many towns are left, in a province where pot is legal, that I can walk down the street and not get sick from exposure to it? How do I feel about my job, about doing it somewhere else and/or about doing something different? How do I feel about working for government? Is there a way to make this work or is there not?

And so on.

I've found a way to go back to the counselor that I had at my old job, basically my current insurance doesn't let me pick a counselor and has a max of 4 sessions on a topic so that's not great. Seeing my old counselor sounds great. The gender piece is pushing at me too, and I think this whole kaleidoscope probably needs to be holistically resolved.

I've also been-- remember in spring, when I was planning a fall butchering party/workshop up here because I needed community? I still need community. So that's another piece of the puzzle.

I'm maybe starting to wake up, but I still feel just so tired. Hope usually comes naturally to me but I feel like the near future is a bit of a sticky slog right now. I am usually pretty confident in the further future.

So there we are.

That was a disaster.

My neighbour was supposed to come over today and look at where I thought the waterline from my well might be. Avallu had been defensive towards him previously, possibly because he's been next door a lot with a big dog of his own, so I broke out the leash and hot dogs.

In the story that follows I'm second-guessing my actions a lot but I'll try and say it as straight as I can. I'm really struggling right now.

I gave the neighbour hot dogs and he was tossing hot dogs over the fence towards them, which is how I always start introductions. Then I had the neighbour come in the gate and toss hot dogs. Avallu seemed to be good, lying down on command, and I turned around to latch the gate with the leash still in my hand. At that point Avallu leapt at the neighbour and bit his arm.

I thought he'd just grabbed the neigbour's sleeve, and the neighbour said fairly calmly "he's got me" so I hauled Avallu into the house, locked him in, and came back. At this point the neighbour was on the outside of the gate, locking it behind him.

I don't remember this next part well, but I said something, and he said he had to go home and fix his arm and took his jacket off-- and Avallu had taken a chunk out of his arm. I said something like "he actually got you, got you" and I think screamed a tiny bit. The neighbour nodded, he was pretty calm, and there was a little back and forth. It went something like:

Him: nothing against you, but if that dog comes on my property he's dead
Me: I fully understand, I'm so so sorry.
(something here I don't remember)
Him: If a kid were to come by and put his hand on the fence it could go badly
Me: (something about how obviously it's not important right now, but he had let other people in and this hadn't happened before)
(something)

At some point, I think before I knew how bad the bite was, I'd said something like if he was willing to stand far from the fence and take treats to try to desensitize Avallu I'd appreciate it but understand if not, and he said something like he was afraid he wasn't interested in that.

He left, and I completely fell apart. I called the local kennel -- I'm worried about finding a good dog trainer in this area, but they'll be the ones who know who to talk to maybe. Then I called the emergency counseling line through work's plan and got myself less hysterical - she was a really good one-off counselor, I'll tell you that.

I'm equally terrified at the idea of Avallu hurting someone, Avallu hurting someone else now that I know he'll actually bite, Avallu being hurt/put down, and trying to repair the relationship with my neighbour.