Greenstorm's Journal

Time was I could see the future

I still remember fragments as they occur

These days I try not to look into the future

It doesn't serve me

Hope doesn't serve me

If anything is meant to serve us, it is ourselves

The world isn't built for it

Unless we cherry-pick

Blossom-pick

Menu-pick

Even with the biggest plate we can't try everything at the buffet of life

And so much of it will be terrible

So we serve ourselves

Not what we're supposed to like

Not what is supposed to make life worth living

But what we actually love

Olives

Anchovy spread

Mochi

Store-bought potato chips

The stinkiest cheese oozing with orange washed rind

Little hot pickles

Winding through the choices people will say

"Try some of this, it's excellent!"

"Ugh, I could never eat that."

And you will want to take Jane's dip to make her feel better. Don't.


Ignore it all

If someone else wants hope

They can take all the hope

Load their plates

Fill their pockets

Live in the unknown future

And leave the shining pearls of each living moment

Inside the glistening oysters

Raw, briny, unpolished

On the table for me

I had last weekend to catch up on rest, then spent the long weekend with Tucker for a one-night date in town. It was a lovely date -- we got picnic food into a hotel and watched most of Good Omens 2, talked some, snuggled lots, had some nice sex. It's sounding like he's moved into wanting the same kind of emotional connection that I've wanted and while I'm kind of skeptical about it on some level -- is this one more go-around on the roller coaster? -- just the ability to have these kinds of conversations is allowing me to relax on many other levels.

You wouldn't think I'd need a recovery day after mostly lying around in bed and then a hotel room all long weekend, but this morning was more weird body stuff, so I didn't get into work till late. I'm starting to get worried. I have an appointment with the sleep specialist coming up to maybe do the round of "do a sleep study, get a cpap because they won't diagnose anything without a cpap trial to rule that out even if it's super marginal, after the trial start to look into other things". The amount of time everything takes is staggering.

This morning I could move my arms a little bit but not lift and control them for awhile. I never really think to track my ability to move my legs, or to roll over. I can definitely control my breathing during these times and I'm so grateful for that: when I used to get full-on sleep paralysis in my teens the worst part was being unable to take deep breaths. At least now when I feel like I can't breathe I can move the rest of my body and vice versa. I also have this really intense sensation on my shoulders and upper arms, which I've had on and off and associate with the sertraline but who knows? I'll likely have to go off that to sort this whole thing. Hopefully there's some sort of room for the ovary-suppressing drug while I'm doing that.

I think I'm more scared than I'm admitting about this? I'm feeling pretty checked-out today and I'm not sure if that's protective dissociation around that fear or whether it's just my brain slowly decaying.

Still, last night I walked in my garden a little. I settled a new rooster, a brahma who's still very tiny, in. I snuggled with dogs and cats, and I was happy.

Now my mind is just quiet, being present, waiting.

One of my skills is that I don't show pain. That's going to be ridiculous to anyone who reads this, I think, because a lot of pain spills out here. But my first instinct is always to smile, make my body move like normal, do the normal things, and just continue.

I seem to remember studies where emotional and physical pain light up the same regions of the brain. I'd believe it. A lot of emotional pain is pretty normal for me, for various reasons. Physical pain... is harder to know about. It's much easier to hide from myself than emotional pain is. Dissociation and displacement motions are second nature to me. I seem to interpret physical pain much lower on the intensity scale than emotional pain, which makes a certain amount of sense: my PDA experience means that the near-death sort of fight-or-flight is triggered super often, and very little physical pain matches that level of immediacy. Sure, maybe I can't think or move right, but I don't feel like I'll immediately die.

Yesterday I went into work and sat in my normal work chair, like I do a couple times a week, and my hip just lost it. From the top of my right hip through my pelvis and down my leg and into my ankle I felt burning/itching. Not searing, but hot and tight and awful. As I went through the day, got off work, went grocery shopping, and eventually came home and collapsed after chores I was trying to think: how would you rate this pain on a scale of 1-10? That's what they always ask, right?

8, because I literally cannot think of anything else.
4, because I can more or less still walk and drive short distances with I think enough attention not to run into things.
4, because I can control any involuntary sounds of pain in public.
9, because it significantly limits daily activities like driving, thinking, eating
5, because it's not an immediate threat to life but I'm not sure I could take more than a week of it continuously

I don't know. I took a couple hours off work this morning and just rested it and slept and it's pretty ok today, but it got me thinking about the whole thing.

Plus Tucker is going to see his girlfriend in the states this weekend, and that is likely to create a more immediate pain. A lot more food for thought.

It's easier to talk about physical pain, and folks are more receptive to both listening and to figuring out ways to help. Emotional pain-- those dynamics are harder, especially for me. The only people who can really understand are other PDAers, I think. Everyone else has been telling me all my life that so many experiences can't really feel like pain to me, or that if they do I'm just a bad human. I guess it's not surprising that my relationship to it is so fraught.

I just want to sit at the pottery wheel and get into my body. I want to be able to go up and plant things without feeling sick and weird in the sun. I'd like to come in after that and be held and have someone make dinner for me.

It's interesting, I think I messed up my brain meds a couple days ago. I am pretty sure I took a double dose, then missed a dose a couple days later (I couldn't remember if I'd taken it or not). So this pain seeps back in. Or maybe it's about Tucker, I don't know.

Either way yesterday was hard and today is hard.

I've been dreaming hard the last couple weeks. These are the long, complex, deeply social dreams I used to have when I was younger; days or months or a lifetime passes and I have enmeshment and intimacy with people. Some of those people exist in real life. Sometimes upon waking I find that they never did and that's pretty devastating because my feelings of care and connection remain.

I also haven't been writing much about non-garden things. Whatever is going on with me has made it difficult. To describe it I will conceptualize writing as having four components: having an idea to write about, being able to form concepts into words, actually doing the push to start (executive function?), and the physical labour of viewing a screen and navigating a keyboard and web interface. Right now I can do the first two but not the two. Bits of things to say float around in my head but I can't sit down and dig into them.

Normally writing feels companionable, clarifying, and positively connecting. I'm putting myself out into the world as myself (this is a practice for me that requires constant, er, practice, which is why this journal is public). Anticipating that connective feeling usually drives me to write in the same way that anticipation of a conversation with a friend might drive you to use your phone. There's usually not a barrier to me for starting. Lately I'm unable to anticipate or conceptualize that feeling in advance so I'm not able to start easily.

Furthermore my body is tired all the time, my elbow had been hurting, and there is still something weird with my vision. I quite often sit or lie there thinking of exactly what to say but the physical experience of writing feels overwhelmingly uncomfortable to me. I have an optometrist appointment this week so we'll see if there's an obvious cause for the vision; if not I'll follow up with my doctor because it has been awhile with this blurry spot in my left eye, with difficulty focusing, and with a patchy/bleeding overlay on light surfaces. Luckily basketweaving seems to have fixed my elbow. I probably just needed to work the unused accessory muscles hard.

Having said that it would be good to find a good speech to text device.

On the opposite end of that I've been doing an evolution deep dive and every once in awhile there's a Stephen Hawking quote. I cannot tell you how soothing it is to hear an AAC (augmentive/alternative communication) device being used. Part of my autism learning has been exposure to folks with situational mutism, that is, folks who sometimes lose the ability to speak but other times are fine with speaking. I get those periods, and I get periods where I can force myself to speak but it's really really uncomfortable. Having just one person in my awareness who uses AAC sets me at ease on an unexplainably deep level, like maybe someday I can do that too when I need it.

I've been pretty busy lately. I'm still very very tired a lot but I've been able to spend a couple hours at a time outdoors somedays. I took two day-long basketweaving workshops and learned to make willow baskets (!!) which felt really joyous and fun. The first one was on Friday, my Friday off, and was a small class full of delightful people including the person who runs my local food bank. It was a nice chat-and-work day. The second class was on Sunday, it had more people and was a lot quieter but I still found so much joy in making the basket. Not quiet pleasure, but actual joy, like a leaping of the heart.

I seem to be able to connect to the things in front of me right now. I may not be connecting well to the internet but every time I see my baby apple trees and tomatoes I'm happy. Those baskets and my pottery feel good. A seed exchange with the food bank person was lovely and I like her generally. It remains such a relief to experience joy and connection again after a winter without.

Some things are more complicated. The pottery studio in town seems to be turning from a "show up sometimes to volunteer" to "carefully navigate people to find out information and push a little but maybe ultimately be a structural/organizing force myself". I'll do that if need be but I'm a little bemused. I've been able to dodge the garden club and landrace gardening organization; I've been good at organizing long enough to know that the second I take anything on I'll be running the whole thing. It may be that if I want the studio to stay open I need to step in, though.

That's always how they getcha. This might be a record timetable for being sucked in though.

Also complicated is stuff with Tucker. With the exception of that one evening (which is scarring from years of society and probably relationships using "your partner feels hurt in this situation" and "you shouldn't be poly because it's bad" and which I totally understand) he's been really present and loving and available. Realizing that I have no obligation to interact with him, I am wondering if I'd like to explore how our interactions could be if 1) he's not in a job where he's super burnt out and 2) I have my mind and sense of enjoyment back. Both those things are true now and they might not have been true for a very long time. I guess we'll see how things go and I'll self-monitor.

Meanwhile counseling today will involve a deep dive into my symptoms that might be medication side-effects (this counselor has lots of experience with autistic folks on various medications, we tend to react differently), some way to track symptoms and make decisions about trade-offs, and hopefully a strategy to approach my doctors and an approach to deciding what do to next. I'm feeling woozy a lot but happy, and I think I need to clear up the woozy before I'm driving 4 hours a day dodging logging trucks on resource roads. If I were in the city it would be fine, but with this much driving it is not.

More random things: donated a bunch of seeds to the burgeoning local garden club for them to give away as prizes, that may count as having given 120 or so packets of seed away locally. Big win.

Food bank can take both eggs and inspected frozen pork. Come to think of it, I wonder if the local teaching kitchen would mind hosting a bacon workshop? That might let me get out from under some pork belly. Contributing to the food bank is a win-win-win; I get to support the part of my community I most want to support, I don't have to run a perishable food retail business (though maybe I can tax write-off a sufficiently big donation?), and folks get food.

Cats are eating 1/2 can a day of wet food mixed with 1/2 can of water each. Their energy levels and coat quality have noticeably increased.

I guess volunteering with the pottery studio is volunteering? I've been looking for something to volunteer with for years here but it's mostly only during working hours. For instance the health and wellness fair that has all the clubs and volunteer folks put out a booth and people from town can go look is Tuesday afternoon, with just a touch of after work time.

I ordered a new, bigger collar for Avallu. He'll let me brush his right feather but not his left so I'm glad I'm working on it a little at a time. He's really enjoying this routine brushing, as am I. He's getting extra snuggly. Now if only I could maintain a routine.

Did I mention I have like 275 apple seedlings growing? Extraordinary. I feel so lucky.

I've been listening to a podcast called "Evolution Talk" lately. I was initially skeptical about 10-15 minute episodes written in an easy-to-digest style since I normally like very fact-based deep dives. The guy comes from a radio play background too, and has voice actors for folks like Charles Darwin. I've found over time though that it's a delight: short enough episodes that I can usually keep my attention through one without having to turn it off and rest, and he's a very clear but comprehensive thinker. He also does a bunch of series on a topic and he really digs into subjects like popularly-unknown folks who worked on pieces of the idea of evolution, multiple theories and how they're supported, etc. He also has his sources on his website which is becoming a requirement for me to take something onboard.

It's been raining and snowing and raining and sleeting. My towels are out on the line and have been for a couple days. On the other hand it's supposed to be 25C next weekend? This is a very springy spring.

Anyhow, very long update but I'm still in here. I'm just less physically and emotionally able to internet than before.

Oh look, someone's been observing my relationships

https://aspergersfromtheinside.com/2017/02/10/being-too-direct/

I'm sliding into myself as a 13-year-old. This is the life I lived then.

Aside from sewing, cooking, gardening, being really earnest, being enthusiastically idealistic, and having a mix of bafflement and impatience for most humans I am re-embracing my method for making friends.

It pretty much involves walking up to someone and saying "you look neat because of X. I'd like to do Y."

So far this mostly involves "you look neat on the internet because (you are PDA/you are a woodland creature/you do plants/whatever). I'd like to friend each other and watch from a distance for awhile."

It feels good to do. I learned a long long time ago that life is too short not to be forthright, and much too short to assume other people will do the work for you. Also it feels shitty when they "mysteriously" don't do the work.

TBH this is probably why I've dated too many people who want other people to do the work.

PS Hazard is staring transfixed into the flames of the woodstove, which I highly approve of but seems like a very ...human.. thing to do?

To read later, seems like the kids have been doing some work in the last decade. Thank goodness. https://thethinkingasexual.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/relationship-anarchy-basics/

If Tucker and Josh read this they're gonna laugh, but: being close with an external processor is a whole skillset, isn't it? It's been a long time since I've spent much time with anyone who talks things through in order to think things through. That's how I operate; I talk my way through things, and so during talking I will catastrophize a bit and then rule catastrophe out, explore unlikely best-case scenarios, run through what-ifs, say all the things folks don't normally admit to and then release those feelings by talking. It's a big lift for my partners; they need to withhold belief and judgement because in working my way towards my correct actions and moderated feelings I pass through all this intense and ridiculous, off-the-wall talking.

That kind of talking needs to be set apart from the decision-making, relationship-navigating logistics discussions. It needs to be set apart from statements of intent and action; it needs to never be confused with clear communication of emotion.

So for anything to be successful there needs to be a way to differentiate and properly contextualize the difference between "this is new to me, I need to talk it out" and "this is new to me: here's my final response". There'll be cues involved; I suspect mine are talking quickly and continuously, using lots of what-ifs and eventualities in the conversation, not settling on any one particular scenario but instead flitting around. When my scenarios start to converge with likely reality, and when I start connecting potential multiple responses to scenarios ("well if that... then I could") then I'm likely coming down out of exploratory processing space.

And none of that knowledge works if it's not put into practice; I guess a check when a conversation starts to lift off of likely reality and get a bit wobbly is good practice anyhow. I've definitely been reliant on my partners to make that assessment and catch a conversation early on; it's a part of situational awareness that's not well-developed for me. Wherever this settles, that is a skill I would do well to pick up.

The danger with two external processors in a conversation is the tendency to spiral, for one person to pick up the most extreme part of the sensitivity analysis and iterate on that with their own most extreme version. It's easy to get so far away from reality that it's not actually processing, but is just digging a hole. So for me it's extra important to honour someone else's processing space instead of reflexively processing their processing at the same time.

I'm also super grateful I've had partners willing to hold space while I did so much of his work myself. It means that when I can't, when I don't have anyone to talk to for situational reasons, I've already had a chance to work through my needs and boundaries in similar situations and I have a body of experience to rely on.

Oof. Okay. This new thing has taken up some bandwidth lately. Today is a gorgeous day out. Time to shift some energy back to my garden. The tiller hasn't arrived yet but I guess it's just time to improvise-- just as soon as I'm done this workday. Oof.

And maybe time to think about setting an alarm to be sure I'm asleep on time. This sleep deficit has done from something to be tolerated to actively interfering.

People tell me their secrets, especially at first. They release things they've been carrying to me. They shine light into their lonely places and let me into spots that haven't felt footsteps in a long time. When I'm new I'm safe because I'm so clearly outside where we're supposed to be, right along with them, and I think it helps people to understand that we can make our own supposed-to-be's.

People come into my life when they're ready for a change, when the life they're living becomes unbearable. They come looking for alternatives and hope. The way I live can give people hope, I guess. People come into my life when they're ready to change, and then they do change, and the life they transform into takes them away from me.

We always love people who will go with us into our dark places but we don't always want them around after.

In some ways it's nice, then, to be talking with someone who did his big change five years ago, and then two years ago. There's as much "holy shit, that's possible?" but he's structured his life so whatever he onboards there is nothing to disrupt. He's thought about a life that suits him and he's made it.

I've thought about my life and what suits me, and I've made it. And because we happen to live in the same town there's no need to shift those lives at all in order to overlap some. Thank goodness. That's about all I'm up for right now.

And in the meantime I can engage with all this big crush energy, all this body energy that's had nowhere to go. It's a lot; this is always disruptive and jangly and unfocused and hyperfocused and everything which way at once. I used to enjoy it. Perhaps I'll find my way back to that, this spring.

Morning walks along the lake with gardeners definitely help. Nice as it would be to skip off everything that could be construed as optional, my garden and forming friendships are tremendously grounding.

I'm very interested to see what happens next.

And then I get Tucker for Solstice and Josh is sending me up food to make during zoom dates.