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Hello, it’s been awhile! I have been stupid busy.

I am genuinely in love, it’s not just a fleeting connection. We have started talking about balancing our lives better because we spend a lot of time together. We’ve had a couple misunderstandings that we’ve needed to work through. I am just absolutely surprised to find a person that fits into my life and has the life skills and background trauma and values and desires and still has their zest, or like built zest for life?

We do menial things together, fun things, hard things, social things, parallel things, and we have separate alone times and separate friend times. When I wake up I feel full in my heart.

I’ve been poking around reddit to see when this more or less “ends”, and the connection becomes more flat and like… companionate? But there are people that maintain this sort of strong, rich, and layered connection with their partner for decades. I end up wondering if people lose the “spark” with their partners because life pulls them down, or in different directions? Or is it a matter of both partners keeping up on partner-maintaining skills and openly communicating about things?

I’m not used to someone I’m with emotionally validating me about things that involve them. It’s different. It feels healing. I feel like I have done my best to provide that in the past, but maybe I didn’t do a good job. Being on the receiving end of this emotional labor, I am learning what supporting and being supported feel like. I am just not used to this amount of emotional and social intelligence and grace in general. Their authenticity and earnest nature are refreshing and intoxicating. It kinda dredges up this weird feeling I have about myself.

I miss when I was a “good” person, an uncomplicated, black-and-white thinking rule follower. I think nuance is incredibly important and I value that I have developed it and have a strong dedication to continuing to unlearn and unpack my binary ways of thinking (sometimes called “splitting” when we’re talking about people). But I miss that earnest, loving child. They tried so hard to always do the right thing, to be helpful, to be a good person. I think they were willing to die to help others but were afraid to care for themselves. I’ve become more healthily self-centered, and that is good, that is progress, that is healing.

Do I really miss that rigid, scared child? I do. I love them and I feel for them. I miss them and I carry them in me. They won’t ever grow up, they are stuck where they are, but I can take care of them now, I can protect them from the world with my adult knowledge and experiences and ability to act in morally gray ways at times. It bothers me, having to be sneaky, using methods other than good work for good works’ sake to get ahead (networking), being disingenuous sometimes. Are they disappointed in me for being a coward sometimes, for not living by my values because we need to eat and have somewhere to live, for not being more aggressive and prominent in the fights that matter? The world is and always will be in turmoil. Is it wrong to have come to believe that? I don’t think we will ever have a time of “peace” for everyone everywhere. We are too complex, too interconnected and independent at the same time. I do my best to improve the lives of my clients, I do a lot around me in my community. What more is there to do besides becoming a martyr? Why do so, I have my own life to live. I think the child in me expected to become a martyr. I don’t mean to say that others’ sacrifices are not or have not been meaningful; what does it mean to live or die for something or someone, really? The way I was raised, it was to serve another person to the point of my own breaking, or death. I refuse to be a servant to anyone. I do “serve” others, though, in moderation with enjoying my own life. This balance, I can live with. I hope child me can accept that, too.

Wow, I dunno what all that was about. Anyway, the person I was hoping to get their job this upcoming season was let go as I was expecting, so…uh…time to be insufferably network-y I guess. I am doing my best to be a good cog. I am taking on parts of their caseload that they left behind. They were incredibly behind on their paperwork. It has been hard to balance with my next grad school class starting. What bugs me is the homework itself isn’t actually that difficult, it’s that I don’t have anything left by the time I sit down to do it between work work that comes home with me, chores, sleeping, eating, seeing people I care about. My executive functioning is shot. I’m in a spot where I might find some @dder@ll by methods other than a doctor referral just to get through grad school.

I’ve become more pragmatic about substance usage, including caffeine and benadryl for sleep. I don’t like it, but it feels like it’s necessary for this stretch of my life. I am increasing my physical activity and being outside and I’m eating better and a bunch of other things, but it’s just that I have too much on my plate and I can’t take anything off of it. I am stuck with this workload until I’m done with grad school and it’s killing me.

In other news, my local farmers market is happening again really soon, I am so fucking excited!!!! My partner wants to learn how to ferment and we’re going to split the cost of things and prep things together. I am really looking forward to it. It really means a lot to me that they are interested in doing my things with me. I’ve usually been the “I’ll do your things with you” type, wanting reciprocity. They want to try all my things. It makes me teary-eyed just thinking about it. I need to get another chef’s knife so that we both have one for going through the veggies. Oh I’m so excited and pleased and touched. Their friends also like fermented things, so we can make enough to share. I like their friends, too. I just like them a lot. I’m so very grateful I tried the terrible dating app and wading through everything to find them lol. I never even went on a date with any of the other people. It doesn’t feel real. I mean, it’s starting to feel real because we are developing deeper, more consequential rapport, and feeling out and talking about boundaries and expectations, but I guess what I mean is I wasn’t expecting to find this kind of connection with a person that is about where I am at in their own personal development at my age so it feels more equal in my lifetime.

I also put on knight armor and got hit in the head with an axe and it was super weird! It actually felt…good? I didn’t really feel or hear the impact as an impact, it was more that my head just moved in a direction kinda slowly lol. I am considering doing armored combat as a hobby after I am done with grad school. I think it would be a lot of fun. I actually have pretty high vestigial movement needs in my sensory profile, I just don’t seek it because I was taught “girls don’t do that”, besides socially acceptable activities like gymnastics, uhh I dunno what else honestly lol. Wrestling? I don’t think that was ok when I was a kid. There are so many more options now if you live in a larger metropolitan area, you just need to go out and find them. Also, being an adult has me like, ok, I don’t care how my actions would reflect on my mother??? I also don’t care what the strangers around me think about whether or not I “should” be doing an activity based on what I am. I think I would do roller derby if I weren’t so scared of breaking my bones. My partner does mountain biking, but again I’m scared of breaking my bones because I am clumsy. If I’m in a full suit of armor, I feel like my chances of breaking bones is lower??? Right???? We’ll see.

Anyway, we gotta get a start on the day actually. My friend is coming to visit from out of state with their girlfriend. We’re hosting and I really want them to like my partner. We have to go back to my place and clean and get snacks ready and I need to finish my stupid goddamn homework (which I should be doing instead of writing this, but I realllllyyyy wanted to write an update this weekend, so…)

Thank you for reading, I hope everything is going well for you and you’re sleeping and eating well. Seeya again sometime soon!