Tag Archives: depression

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Update

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So, as you may have noticed, I haven’t written in awhile. It’s not that I haven’t come up with a million awesome ideas for posts, including some awesome ones bragging about the cool people that I know and/or love, but I have been out doing things, doing people, doing work of all sorts. And clearly, not writing.

Depression hit. I struck back by starting light therapy in the mornings and getting more regular about taking Vitamin D. It seems to have died down quite a bit. My anxiety levels are still a bit higher than normal, but depression has mostly abated, giving me some more summer time to make connections and socialize before it gets bad. If it gets bad…. It feels fairly mild this year, honestly. We’ll see, come November through January.

Bit #1

Moss and I had a really tough conversation on this last Monday. I had hyped myself up to catastrophization levels and was sure we were done for. I even talked to my therapist about it pretty extensively – her two big remarks were to be ready to let go of the relationship if my boundaries couldn’t be met (I’m not sure I was, which is what I told him when he asked if I had been) and to talk about the difference between something being urgent and something being important. I talked to him briefly that weekend to nail down plans and asked if I had anything to worry about in regards to the conversation – no, no agenda.

We had a lovely picnic in the Arboretum by the water, first in the sun, then in the shade. We settled into our normal conversational cadence – smooth, easy, flowing, no pressure. Then we talked about the situation at hand, about what our needs were, what we wanted going forward. And my fears were eased – no, no break-up. In fact, I think we came out of the whole situation more solid than we’ve been for a month or so.

I had the overwhelming feeling I do sometimes, when I can’t hold a thought or a feeling back – that it is overwhelming my mouth and I can’t but speak its name and nature. And so I did – I told him that I loved him. In the five seconds that followed my brain did an amazing thing – Anxiety hyped me up “What if he doesn’t love me, what if that makes or breaks things, what if it is too big a feeling to handle?”, but Reason stepped in and said “So what? You’ll figure it out with him, you’ll communicate about it, everything will be fine”. And everything was fine. Everything was more than fine. And yes, not going to keep you in suspense – the feeling was very mutual.

So far things have been going well enough with Eve on his end, even after talking with her about the situation and what he and I had talked about together. It gives me great hope!

Bit #2

So, I’ve been trying the casual dating thing with a few people, each of which has been going very differently, but each has some continuing potential. In order of first dates:

#1: He’s super fun to talk about politics and the local poly community with. Decent kisser. Some sexual chemistry, but unsure where I want to go with that. Even if we just ended up as friends (maybe as friends who fuck? I don’t know where this is going, really), that would be a good thing.

#2: We knew each other through a local lunch group that I organized awhile back, so we’ve had opportunities to chat before. Quiet, but worth the listening to. He’s a bit hard for me to read, so I’m not 100% sure of the level of mutual interest, but he seems to keep wanting to see me and he spoke well of me to Lola at an event they both attended. Even if it only ends up being a friends who go out to things thing, it would be fun.

#3: We’ve known each other for a couple years, but yeah, life can be complicated, especially when it comes to poly. I always thought he was cute and enjoyed when I’d see him at events. He is actually one of the cutest poly stories I have – we were in the hot tub at a party together and we had been talking for a bit, flirting for a bit, and he leans over to whisper in my ear that he would really like to kiss me right then, but things were too complicated at the moment. A couple years later, let me tell you – that kiss was fabulous, if a bit delayed. Also, I was thinking about this later, but he’s the first person I’ve fucked on the first date (not counting people I fucked before the first date and people for whom there was never a date). So yeah… fun stuff. I will be glad to see where this goes.

Each of these has at least had second dates and has a third scheduled.

Bit #3

Inspired by my therapist I’ve been turning over in my head if I want to try to actually get a travelling notary public business off the ground. At my last session/my first session in awhile she had asked me about my work stuff and had suggested marketing my skills, as a paralegal and my notary public license, to GRSM (Gender, Relationship, and Sexual Minority) people, particularly the LGBTQ community, as having someone who is one of them around could be a big mark in my favor.

I would have to do a few things to even have a chance of getting it off the ground – stop procrastinating on getting my notary stamp/seal, look into getting a business license, get a phone number independent of my personal cell number, set up a separate email address and basic website, set up bank account stuff, and I am absolutely sure I am missing something – but I looked at the market in my area and it seems like there is space for more notaries before the saturation point is reached.

There is plenty of space for expanding services in different directions once I get stuff off the ground, but this seems like a possible and doable thing for me.

Bit #4

Things seem to have stabilized on the gender front, a bit – it tends to be fluid, but a lot of the time my gender ends up manifesting as, “Do I really have to pick a gender?” or as “Not today, thank you” or something ridiculous, like “fuck your binary gendered”. I am getting a bit more finicky about having people use my correct pronouns and am starting to go on mini-tirades in my head when I am in a situation where I am forced to pick one (bathrooms being my most common example). But yeah, I think this, like everything else about me, is going to remain fluid.

Bit #5

The woman who took care of me from basically birth to kindergarten and occasionally after, is dying of cancer. She probably doesn’t have much longer. The common impression seems to be that we’re talking maybe double digit weeks, if not a few months, but soon. On Sunday there was a party in her honor held at the home/complex she’s living at – a “celebration of life” thing. So I drove about an hour and a half to get to see her, probably for the last time. It amazed me how small and frail she looked, like I could almost break her, but her mind and sense of humor were still as sharp as a tack.

The whole event gave me some perspective on how far life has taken me away from my early days. Her son, who is somewhere around a decade older than me always seemed so tall to me when I was a kid (and looking at the old pictures). But he is actually around my height, probably an inch or so shorter (and I am 5′ 3.5″), It left me wondering how much of who I am is because of this woman, and losing that will be a blow.

I’m still doing a fair amount of processing on this and probably will be, off and on, for awhile. But that’s what I have for now.

So yeah. I will try to write more often, but because we’re heading into winter I can’t exactly promise that.

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A Contemplation…

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For some reason I am full of everything today – love, sadness, joy, grief, and philosophy, to say the least.  But I am remembering a time, a celebration of a time-person.  I occasionally like to gather my thoughts on an event, a relationship, a book, a substance, and see what I can actually remember.  What actually stuck in my mind – what my brain deemed important enough to go into long-term storage.

CN: depression, grief, alcohol use (in excess), marijuana use (illegal still), throwing up

For today, a funeral.  Well, I’m not sure if it counts as a funeral if there is no body (only ashes) and the emphasis is on joy and remembrance, rather than sorrow.  For my passed/past beloved Minx – for whom the memories are fading too fast and the feelings all I have left.  It is hard when all that is left is feelings – there is nothing solid to back them up, no reason, so what is the point?  But they exist.

I remember feeling sad.  The sad that exists in a functional way.  I can see and hear and do, but everything is tinged with sadness.  There is no hope for it, just pushing through, gaining joy in each day until the sadness is no longer mentally overwhelming, but just a set of feelings, just memories filling a void.  That is recovery.  At this point, I am not even sure I was starting that journey.  I had forced myself to exist in the world for awhile, so I didn’t have to contend with the profound grief that came with living in my own head.

I do not remember what I wore that day, only that it was colorful – couldn’t do black for someone that joyous and full of life.  Probably purple because she loved that color.

I remember bringing two bottles of wine and finishing one whole one and about eighty percent of the second, along with at least some beer and most of a mixed drink.  I do not even remember if they were good, just that they were white wines and intoxicating (I had not figured out how my body could do red wine yet (I was on the way, but I only drank full portions of whites).

I remember food, a huge spread of it, a potluck.  I remember trying to keep it organized (for the love of god V, do something useful, don’t just stand around at an event – says my mother in my head).  I remember it was divided up by whether it contained meat, animal products, or gluten.  I don’t remember what I brought, though I think I made it myself.

I remember going on a walk with Musician.  We had been broken up for close on 2 years at this point, but he felt for me.  We took a walk around the property and just talked.  It was talking in that odd way that exes on decent terms can do – I knew you well, once upon a time we were intimate, but now, now we can talk of, now we can do some reconciliation.  Heal what can be done from the past, instead of trying on the immense boulder of pain that is the present grief.  So walk we did, over rocks, through the forest, and talk we did: about the current pain, past pain, and what to do.  I can’t say it was cathartic, but it was good for that time.

I remember being in a barn and vaping pot.  I didn’t actually care what kind, just a bit of distraction.  So I did.  One of the very few times that the pot and alcohol mixed poorly for me and amplified each other’s effects.  I think most of that was due to quantity of alcohol and the effects of the overwhelming emotions present.

I remember many memorializg speeches.  Heck, I remember giving one and thinking about how bad it was, compared to others.  I remember karaoke at the end of things, as the sun was setting.  I know I got up there and my memory seems to say that I did passably well, but I doubt it, given the quantity of substances I had already consumed at that point.

I remember getting ready to leave, as I knew I had to head home soon, and only then noticing that I wasn’t the drunken person there – that was Raven.  I knew how much I had consumed and if what he told me at that point in time was anywhere near a perfect recollection of what he actually had consumed, then he was far more gone that me.  I remember a passing thought about us being the two people who had earned the right to be drunk (like at a wake, but a more lively one).

I asked Trydaen to drive because I was majorly incapacitated.  We made it to a couple hundred feet outside the property gates when I asked him to pull over.  And we were there for several hours as I proceeded to empty the contents of my stomach in an unfortunately forceful way.  Then we managed to make it to the outlet mall (about a ten minute drive) where we had to pull over again for a bit more than an hour.  I remember feeling physically and emotionally very ill indeed, with a hangover the next morning that was almost as bad.

I remember those last details very vividly.  They are the basis for my more moderate attitude towards alcohol today – because I never wanted to be the cause of me feeling that fucking miserable again.  And I haven’t, in the more than 3 years since.

In written form this seems like a lot of memories.  But really, it all feels so small, so insignificant, in comparison to the scale of the feels present.

These days I am better.  This grief has impacted my life and my brain permanently, there’s no way around it.  But I have felt so much joy in this last year or so, and joy in learning how to interact with my grief in the time prior, that I am through a great majority of the pain and working to be through even more – not to forget, in fact the contrary, but to be fully present for my partners and not find them in comparison, but simply, as them.

The future looks so bright from here and I am so amazed at the potential it has for me.

I love, am loved, was loved, have loved, and that, that is joy.

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November Write 24

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Today is Thanksgiving, at least in this part of the world (happy very belated Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends).  That means so many things to me – it is so enmeshed in traditions, old and new, full of both bio and chosen family.  It is a holiday of family – and that is what I am thankful for.  I am thankful for the chance to get to create and make for those members of my family I can be with.  For those I am not with, I am sad that I am not, but I am hopeful that they have joy today.

The holidays bring up starkly some unpleasant feelings about what it is like to live with some of my life in the shadows.  And I cannot abide by that.  It is important to me to celebrate with my whole family.  It is important to me and who I am as a person.

You, my loved ones, you have given me the strength to work towards bringing my families together as much as I can, exposing them to each other, starting with my immediate families – chosen: Trydaen, Diplomat, and Lola (at least for starters – I would like to include June and Star and Lola’s kids, but I have to start somewhere), and family of origin: my mother, father, and sister.  I know this will not be an easy process, but I am working on it.  I am convinced that, whatever the pain to me, this is right.  I cannot live any longer with parts of my life in the shadows.  I cannot do this wrong.

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A few years perspective…

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I have never been sure whether poly is an intrinsic thing to me – that I could not ever live well without it – or merely something I have chosen that continues to resonate well for me. I’ve been doing it for about 7 years now (non-monogamy for about 10) and I’m still not sure. At this point I’m not even sure if it matters – I will not go back to being monogamous.

But, for a taste of a different time…

Minx died three years ago, early in the morning on August 4th. I wasn’t seeing anyone other than Tryden at the time.

I spent more than two years out of the dating world. Almost out of the poly world. I spent that time trying to figure out what to do with myself – what do you do when a love of your life dies suddenly? How do you put yourself back together?

I tried by myself for about a year – tried to logic myself out of depression, out of grief. And that was, to a small extent, that worked. But I needed help, so I got a therapist, who gave me the tools to help myself out.

The one thing I couldn’t shake – that I wouldn’t be able to fall in love again, hence I could never truly be polyamorous again. And that crushed me. How could I live without something that had made me feel so whole, so alive? What could I be?

The reassurance that, even if I only ever had one partner for the rest of my life, I would still be poly because that’s how I felt deep inside, was little comfort. I started doubting myself – who am I without this? What happens if/when Tryden decides that he has had too much of my mopey, sad, self-pitying self and decides to leave me? What would I do then?

So, with these questions lingering in my head, I decided that, whether love was going to happen or not, I wanted to spend time with my friends, and actually start to live again. So I put myself back out there, socializing, going to events, meeting new people.

Not long after, I met (and hooked up with) Gray Sky. And not long after that, I found something happening that I didn’t expect – I was falling in love with him. So I told him, he told me back, and for a couple months everything was fine. Then it wasn’t, and we split (well, he broke up with me).

But, if I learned nothing else from that relationship (which isn’t true), then I learned that I could love again. And that was one of the greatest gifts of all.

That break up, broke my heart. As they tend to do. But, after a few months, I decided to put myself back out there again, since that worked so well the last time. I went out to a poly round-up in my area in March, the day before my birthday, to meet people, to socialize – then, when I needed it, there was a place to spend with other introverts, other social exhausted people.

And there I met Diplomat. We spent some significant time talking about politics, life, and Shakespeare. I enjoyed his company, but didn’t think it would pan out to be anything more than fantastic conversation – which was fine.

But…yeah. Not just fantastic conversation, but so much more. And he helped me remember why I chose polyamory, why I chose to love over and over again.

So, I am back. Back where I was more than three years ago, older and wiser. And so much in love – with Tryden, with Diplomat – in a different sense, with Lola – and with polyamory. <83