plain speaking

a ramble

I recently met someone that I became very close to. He was loving, acknowledging, very giving. Yet he also had behaviors that I didn’t know how to negotiate. I thought I could learn to exercise a loving detachment, but was rudely shocked to find I was quite incapable. His behaviors always seemed to hit me sideways. The closer we grew the harder it became, until I found myself completely out of control, angry and reactive. Trying to recover from relating to him and not thriving. I realized I needed to say no. As beautiful as we could be together this behavior in myself was traumatizing to me and likely very traumatizing to him.

Leaving me once again feeling unsafe in myself.

This world we live in I find hard to venture out into. The arts center here that I planned to become involved in has a vaxx pass stipulation. My world has become more and more limited. I long for community to just be in. Something separate from the insanity. Not learning about the endless ways to deal, to survive, but just to be.

Because of what I’ve been through in my life I need to draw strong boundaries with others. Sometimes I am gentle, sometimes I might be a bit harsh. Most often my boundaries bring up trauma in others even when I am my gentlest.

In the best of times I find negotiating the world challenging. This is not the best of times.

I have always found that writing steadies me. I have been writing for as long as I can remember. It has helped me stay sane when my sanity was slipping away.

And so I wonder now what makes sense. There are so many voices out there speaking to the shit of it, I cannot join in anymore. What I want to speak to is very intimate and maybe just for me.

The work I have done, in this quiet isolated solitary place has been beautiful, but really only possible because it has just been for me. I’ve learned to sing and voice play, something I never thought I would know.

I wonder at an existence without others. That there is something so beautiful in it that I have yet to explore. A connection to something larger more profound.

I think love is transforming and healing, but I wonder at trauma being compounded for so many right now. I think the most transforming love I have experienced is the love I have given myself. Something I have only just begun to understand recently. I think being human requires so much forgiveness of self. But maybe more understanding than forgiveness, or maybe both together.

I like to make space for not knowing, for not having to know. So a deeper understanding is possible. Or just space snd breath can be had.

A ramble… thank you for reading. ❤️