Hello, Internet. It's been a while.
And oh how things have changed. 2008 was a hell of a year, and I can say with quiet certainty that I am deeply okay with it being over. It wasn't a bad year, exactly. It was just a turbulent one. I don't even know what to say.
Look. In April, I asked, to know
what the root of this [anxiety] was. And I can now tell you what it was, beyond any shadow of a doubt. No matter how often I told therapist #1 (and no matter how many times x10 that I told myself) that the fear was from marrying in to John's family, the truth of the matter is that that wasn't it. The reason I said I didn't want to get married yet for the first six years of our relationship was because the back of my brain, my nervous system, my intuition all knew what I couldn't not process in the front of my brain. It was in fact John I couldn't marry, shouldn't marry. Will not be marrying.
I realized I had to end the relationship 2 days before he ended up in a near fatal car crash in the Middle East. Which was awkward timing. The whole thing was awful, and I could have handled it better. So could he, however. The day about a week later I realized that I was right, that this was over for real, was the moment he screamed long distance calling me stupid, calling me lazy fucking housekeeper. He tried to put it back together, but I had to escape. The deal I've had since the beginning was the day that he became his father was the day I walked. Instantly. And it was Vince's voice yelling at me over the phone. (I thought I meant the day he hit me, but the first sign of true
Vinceness was always my walking papers - something I'd made clear very early.)
I miss him - I miss him as my best friend. The day before he came home, about a month later, I knew I had to say the words 'it's over' to his face... (he wouldn't let me over the phone), I was on my way to a work function, when suddenly it hit me. I'd made my peace with the relationship ending, I'd stop wearing the ring months earlier. I realized that I was losing my best friend. It was like being gutted.
I did, too. We were friendly for a while, but John decided after about a month that we were not going to be friends, and that was that. It's a loss, and it makes me sad.
It was so the right thing, though. Haven't had a panic attack in months. Have no regrets about my decision. Am happier than I've been in more years than I can remember.
Also, and this was a little complicated, I've fallen in love with someone, and it's been so easy. All of it. The falling, the him, the everything. We're going down to
Lethbridge for Boxing Day for a couple of days. I've been promised long games of canasta and lots of rum. And no drama. His *mother* offered to switch Christmas to the next day just to make it easier on Dave. Like it was no big deal. His family is nice and pleasant and fun. I went down for Thanksgiving - after 24 hours it was like I'd known them forever and it was all so comfortable. I like them. Which is great, because I'm rather head over heels with Dave. My parents like him, all my friend like him. My sister wants him to set her up with one of his enumerable cousins - she wants to marry in to his large farm family. She also says that she can't remember the last time I looked so pretty and happy.
I am happy. Happy and relaxed. I swear to god, it's like everything that was clenched has relaxed.
And there was a lot that was clenched.Dave is so different - and yet so similar in some ways. I actually know Dave through John, from University. They're both structural engineers, they're both exceedingly smart and funny. But Dave comes from a huge (relatively functional and happy) family (42 cousins!). He gets along well with his (funny and nice) family. He's deeply loyal. He moved through the world without doubting himself at every turn, or being worried about random strangers judging him. He knows who he is, and owns it. He's a huge sports fan. The apartment I'm sitting here typing this in is decorated as a shrine to Lanny McDonald and Theron
Flury. (Flames players from the 80s.) It's what he's interested in - hockey is what he's passionate about. He's not apologetic about it - it's who he is. But it means that he's just as happy that I have my own things. John hated it when I read books - seriously. Dave? As long as I'm nearby, he's happy. We've whiled away a pleasant evening on the couch, him watching the game(s) and me reading and watching occasionally.
Look. Dave is just so easy to be with. So fun. He likes me for
me. When I'm with him, I can breathe easily and just not worry. I can have my own interests and opinions and feelings and THAT'S OKAY. It's nice, you know?
He also thinks I'm beautiful, and when I'm with him, I feel like maybe, just maybe, I am. It's so nice to not have an insult slid in to every compliment. It's so nice to feel like me, on my own, as I am right now, is enough. Is more than just enough. It's nice to feel like I'm allowed to be
me, as imperfect as that may be. You know?
Let's see. I've had my half the house bought out. I've purchased a brand new shiny blue Toyota Corolla. I'm living in an apartment two stories above Dave, in a decent building full of nothing but young pot smokers and old people. My job is secure for a good while, I think, even in this crashing economy. Dave and I are talking about a 3 week wander around Europe this spring. One way or another, I'm buying property when my lease is up. I just celebrated my 27
th birthday, and maybe I'm not where I thought I would be, but you know what? I was living my life according to what I thought I should do, according to the plan in my head. Fuck the plan. This is my life, and I couldn't be happier. I'm going to finish this rum and diet coke, drag that adorable man away from his computer climb in to bed with this wonderful man.
Internet? I think this may be it for this blog. I'm going to finish copying everything in to a word doc (including all those
diaryland years), have it professionally printed and call it a day. I read follow all of your writing every day, please know that. I just think that right now? I am happy and don't have much to say. My life is working out, albeit in new and mysterious ways. I'm happier than I've been in longer than I can tell you. I'm 27 years old and you know what? Despite the fact that a year ago, I wouldn't have believed you if you told me that this is where I would be, I couldn't be happier. This is my life, and I love it. Complicated and messy? Sure. Full of laughter and fun and love? You bet your ass.
I win,
internet. I win.
Labels: grown ups, identity, life, marriage, the boy, wedding
I would like to feel something else, please.
It is astonishing about now, in the midst of a frantically busy month, at the end of a fabulous and busy weekend, at the end of a day that had4 different events involving more than a dozen different people, days before John arrives for a vacation, that i can be just so SWAMPED by the Sunday weepies, even still.
I stay so busy that I can't function. Fucking vacuuming - I've stalled for like, 6 months and really should before John gets home Wednesday. I have plans and activities, I keep busy. And yet, I'm sitting here, listening to Matt Good sing to me of sorrow and rage, weeping. Again.
I'm out 4-5 nights a week, these days. I barely come home to check the mail, it seems. I stay so busy, and let I'm still here on Sunday night, weeping. I can't stay busy enough - no matter what I try, I still end up here almost every Sunday, waiting for the hours to slip by, waiting for the bright respite of a new week. Someone asked me at the bachelorette on Saturday how I've been coping, seeing it's been 8 months already - they remarked at how well I was doing. At least 3 martinis in, I told the truth, and they seemed shocked. I guess I seem to keep it together. (Then again, this same woman thought that I was Erin's sweet and nice friend - which set of hysterical laughter from those who know me well. I'm not that girl, but I guess you can fool some of the people all the time.) But I'm not fine. I stay busy - so busy. Even in some ways busy in what probably are bad. But I'm out and I'm moving and I can't slow down unti lSunday evening, and here I am. Again and again.
One weekend, after having a panic attack in slow motion for the entire day (I went to the mall for shampoo because you can't lose it in public), I came home and drank an entire bottle of wine with dinner. Sliding myself out of my skull into a puddle on the carpet was the only way I could think of to stop it - it was not in any way healthy but it worked.
Every other day is fine. Every other day is full. Yet, today, as I got in the car after event 4 and pulled on to the highway, I could feel it start.
No matter how much time I spend with people I love, I am so lonely. It's been 8 months, you guys. 6 months to go. When does his absence stop feeling like I've been kicked in the chest?
He's home in 3 sleeps, you guys. 3 sleeps and I still miss him so much it hurts.
That's what it is, in part. (I'm thinking through my fingers here.) It's one thing to have foreign vacations in far away lands - it's another thing to have him home in OUR BED for just two weeks. I've partially got so used to his absence that it's only a phantom limb, most of the time. But this? The sheets will still smell like him - I'll have laundry of his to do when he's gone. I've been doing pretty good at building a pseudo single life here for the last 240ish days. And then he's going to he back, to be here, and then he will leave again, and that's, I guess, the part of this that's killing me. It won't be enough - of course it won't. He'll leave, and there will still be 185 days more to go.
Enough, Morgan. This is not helping. Go do the fucking vacuuming. Enough. enough.
Labels: life, solo year, the boy, twisty, vacation
At least it's covered by work
So I'm in therapy tonight, talking to a woman only a few years older than me. I'm talking about the anxiety, and my hands are fluttering around like birds. About 35 minutes in to the session, she says that while normally she's not a fan of medication, but have I considered it?
Yeah, I told her that I'd pass, of course. Nice to know that the it's always an option, I guess. I don't know.
I just wish I knew what the root of this was. Because it makes me so very, very tired.
Labels: twisty
I am tired and my body is confused. (I am tanned though.)
Travel is so disorienting. I just got back from the Middle East again (and I do love that sentence, so please excuse the pretentiousness that drips off of it) and am feeling deeply dislocated. I walked out of work yesterday at 4 (boss and I both snuck out early) in to nice afternoon sunshine. The day before, at 4 (clock time, because who the hell knows what time the body thinks it is) I was standing in a bookstore in Heathrow buying trashy UK magazines. The day before I was in Muscat, in a museum of Omani history. The day before that, I was snorkeling in the Gulf of Oman, getting stung by microscopic jelly fish. They day before, I was in the backcountry of Oman in an expensive 4x4 landrover, truly in the middle of nowhere.
Today we're having a freak snowstorm. This weekend it's supposed to be +20 in Calgary. Last week in Nizwa our car registered +40. I'm going snowboarding soon. My body spent 9 days with an eleven hour time difference, and I transitioned home a little better than last time, but I'm still so very tired. I was tired the whole time there too - I don't think I made it to midnight more than one night all trip.
(The trip, of course, was fabulous and wonderful and amazing and crazy and expensive.
Full of ocean and mountains and tent camping at the highest peak and being upgrade gratis to a six star resort and a landrover and a yaris and backcountry dust and souqs and goats and seeing grinding poverty and true opulence and pretty much living out a national geographic special in the back country. Really fucking amazing, all told. Pictures to follow, probably. I also do a powerpoint for friends and family - if you have any interest, I can email it to you. I am a nerd.)
Labels: life, the boy, vacation
Change
I'm really bad at change, like a lot of people. I'm bad with life change, with change of plans, with uncertainty. I don't like doing new things, meeting new people, having to call strangers. These are not thing I am good at. Or enjoy.
I mean, it's so bad. I had to call the pharmacy to see if my prescription had come in, and that made the breath freeze in my chest. It's like that for everything I do. (Yes, I do have an anxiety problem, what's your point?)
So what do I do about it? (Other than take deep breaths and get stuff over with as fast as I can, once I FINALLY stop stalling?) I just... do it. I force myself to walk across the street and introduce my self to the new neighbours (which shouldn’t cause anxiety but does). I call the pharmacy and ask my question. I sign up for weekend long yoga workshops on my own. (I hate doing yoga with friends - that's a far too ME space.) I eat the occasional dinner by myself in a restaurant (though that one only because John's away - normally we eat together). I would go to a movie by myself if there was something I actually wanted to see and no one was available (I've done it before). I did a glass blowing weekend workshop a few weekends ago and it was AWESOME. (I made 5 paperweights, a glass, and a black Christmas ornament.) I am a solitary person by nature - I need a lot of alone time, a lot of book time.
I am fine with all this stuff, but it makes me so dam anxious. I have no idea why - it's not like I expected that, oh, I don't know, the pharmacist is going to yell at me, or everyone in the glass class hate me. Nothing like that. I just... you know... get anxious. Really anxious. About doing new things, about things out of the ordinary. So i keep doing it. I mean, I'm obstinate that way. But... will it ever get easier?
Labels: grown ups, identity, solo year, twisty
This would make me sad if it wasn't springlike in Calgary this week
From the hotel's website: "Muscat enjoys warm weather from November to March, with cool, and occasionally cold, nights. From May to October, coastal breezes and low humidity combine to lessen the effects of the desert heat." We, of course, are going in April. However, the weather
forecast for the week tickled me pink.
I am delighted by all the effort that someone clearly went to
describe "sunny". The last one, the "pleasant with a full day of sunshine" is entirely my favourite.
Labels: snippet, vacation
God, this AGAIN?
Whoo! On a whim, i pulled off my glasses and did my first totally unsupported head stand, right in my home office, on the blue green shag carpet. I've been doing yoga for +8 years, and working on the headstand for easily 3 years. I've been doing wall supported ones until early this year, when I have been managing to do them unsupported, but with a wall right there in case - and I've needed it. (Five minute headstand? Yeah, slipping off balance is quite likely. A foot tap to the wall and back up, but still. Knowing that you can't flip over forward is comforting.) So I just did it! Just, you know, because.
Yoga is great. It's one of the few areas of my life that has defined progress. I mean, when I started, I couldn't touch my toes. Too many years of competitive swimming as a kid made for super tight hamstrings. Now? Well. Now I can wrap my hands under my feet without even warming up. And, of course, do headstands, handstands, crazy back bridges, strange balancing poses, and so much more. Love.
And yet. I fight with this body so much. I fight my love of exercise with my love of food. I struggle with my weight, with my body, with my self image. According to my BMI, (a system I call TOTAL BULLSHIT on), I'm obese. I've lost 5 pounds recently, and am still obese. I wear a size 10-12 pants, and like, 14 or more on top, due to the Boobs. I work out on average of 7 times a week. I do cardio and weights at work, yoga and meditation in the evenings and on my Fridays off, and go to the gym with Erin on weekends. I hike, snowboard and cross country ski. My body is strong and powerful, and while I may carry too much fat around my torso, you should see my arms. Ripped. I do not muscle like a girl. I just don't. That one summer I worked for the city, setting up 20 foot tents for the city, I had 17 inch biceps - 17 inches of solid muscle arms. Most women can't do that with steroids. I work with a woman who is the international gold medal winner or whatever in power lifting. Her arms are like, half of mine. (She could kick my ass in a second - that's not the point. And she's totally not on steroids. The point is I am bulky muscled in a way that most women can't ever be.) I was in class earlier this week, doing lunges or leg lifts or something, and I was watching the muscles on my legs ripple as I worked.
I am strong. I am fit. I am fat, by some fairly arbitrary standard. Some meaningless number that has no bearing on how I feel, or how I live my life. With John I climb mountains. I am neither defined nor particularly limited by my adipose tissue. I eat fairly healthily, and my doctor has made no complaint about my weight. (Actually, I don't have that much of a choice. My body rejects most daily and fatty food and pretty much everything greasy. Pizza is my personal digestive enemy.) My cholesterol and blood pressure are perfect.
So why do I feel the need to say this over and over to myself? Why do I beat myself up that my attempts to lose weight are far slower than I want? Why do I obsess about something so fucking inane? I mean, my weight? Can I be more cliché? Why not focus on my anxiety about the wedding (not the marriage), or the whole he's-been-extended-to-December making 2008 the year of Home Alone, or my inability to keep this too-large-for-one-person-house clean? Or plan my trip at the end of the month for Dubai and Oman? I mean, why not spend my mental energy in a place where it might do me some good? Or at least go do another dozen kick ass yoga poses until I feel good about this body of mine?
Yeah. That's a good plan. Eka Pada Urdhva Dhanurasana it is.
Labels: body, wedding
