Balance

I have piles of unfinished stories, unedited poems, started and unstarted projects…this is the bane of any artist’s existence, I’m sure. I have a pile of unread books on my desk. There are some movies I wish I had time to watch. I bought three albums of music recently and have barely touched them.

I’m the treasurer for a local reading series, which has just started another season. I’m a volunteer for a festival that just wrapped up. I’m an occasional staffer at the Toronto Shambhala Centre and I may or may not be helping them with their mailing list soon. I recently joined a poetry group. I’m also taking some meditation courses. Oh, and did I mention work 40 hours a week?

Ya.

For the past few years, I’ve managed with readings/festival (two capacities which don’t really overlap much, thankfully) and some ad hoc projects here and there on the fly. Recently I’ve comitted to a few more things, and gotten the overwhelming sensation that I may have tipped the scales.

Aside from other anxieties and struggles in my life related to becoming a more complete human being and having fulfilling relationships, I think might be something of a workaholic. Except I’m addicted to working for other people, and almost never for myself. But I seem to have a threshold.

My sleep has suffered. My meditation has suffered. My…body has suffered. I can’t sit still. I’m constantly worried the other shoe is about to drop and I’m going to let somebody down. I’m having nightmares. Just lately I seem to be having minor heart palpitations. My appetite is waning.

I keep a whiteboard calendar. I keep fearing I’ll forget to put something on it. I keep double-checking my inbox. I feel tired all of the time, and depressed. When I’m not doing something productive, I silentely curse myself and feel ashamed. “You could be doing ____” I think to myself. That’s terribly unhealthy, and I know it.

At work, my project is getting a little more complicated than it previously was, and I feel woefully inadequate. Most other people in the office who could give me advice are super busy with more important projects. I feel like a fool if I don’t ask for help, and a bother if I do. It sucks.

This is just life, my therapist tells me. You have to make choices, find a balance. There is never enough time in the week to do all of the things I want to do. Never enough energy or willpower. And I just can’t seem to relax- ever. Hardly ever. I can distract myself, but not relax.

And I feel like a pouty, self-pitying jerk complaining about it. I have a lot of friends now who have kids. A few of them might relate to my lifestyle and its difficulties, but not many. What do I know about stress, right? I don’t have kids. I’m drinking mimosas and writing my novel in my glamourous city lifestyle.

Nope.

I brought this on myself. Now I either have to get better at juggling, or let some things go. Or learn to relax (a much taller order). It’s not the end of the world. Just a busy month. Too many awesome things to choose from is a good problem to have. It’s just not a good problem to keep.

Welcome Home to Shelter Valley

A few years ago I sent out a story (if you could call it that) explaining my insecurities and my resolve to tackle them every year at the Shelter Valley Folk Festival, even while admitting that SVFF has often been a sensory overload for me that has at times been alternately intensely joyful or painful. It was a difficult thing to admit that I was struggling with ambivalence. There were a lot of painful moments that were overshadowing things for me.

I skipped last year’s festival partly because I was under a lot of pressure at work, partly because the idea of being a crew chief again was very intimidating, and just life in general was making me feel overwhelmed.

I am a different person than I was two years ago. I don’t see things quite the same way or hear things quite the same way (I mean that positively). A few of the filters that kept me from receiving other peoples’ love or really feeling the moment have been stripped away. I’m not as tense or worried about the small things anymore. I have a better sense of self. That is something hard-won, and I was eager (though a little scared) to take that for a spin at Shelter Valley.

(As I’ve said before, I might not seem all that different to some- I still largely do and say the same things- I’m just not quietly agonizing about them as much.)

I volunteer now at the Toronto Shambhala Centre as well, periodically. It’s part of the practice. In contributing to the community, we learn from our mistakes, but also how to be kind to ourselves and to others. To try to do things a certain way (sense of ritual), but not cling rigidly to those rituals, at the detriment of cooperating with those around us.

In the past, SVFF had an undercurrent of rigidity that put me (and many others) slightly on edge. I think I just assumed for a long time that it was necessary. Turns out, it wasn’t. Turns out the world doesn’t fall apart if you haven’t planned for every possible contingency. (This seems to be an ongoing lesson for me.) This year, the festival (and also me?) have taken on a vibe of letting go of the small things. It was an enormous comfort to me, and I don’t think I could have accepted it so fully, if not for being the person I am now. (There was a time where I identified more with the uptight “type A’s”, than with the more loosey-goosey types. Hopefully I am now somewhere in the middle)

Still, when you do something long enough, you know what to expect. You can do it more effortlessly. And you can either take that, and run on auto-pilot until you’re bored, or you can use that to see how you can make things even better.

I didn’t get much sleep over the course of the weekend. But I also sometimes admitted I needed help (like more blankets, when I was freezing my ass off) and openly admitted to when I needed to lie down for a while so I didn’t become a walking tragedy. I didn’t see everything or talk to everyone. I didn’t do everything perfectly. But I am not agonizing over what I didn’t do.

I think this year, really for the first time, I really HEARD it. It. Everything. That’s the only way I can put it. Even though I’ve been going there for almost a decade. Even though I got married right on that same farm. For years I felt, to some extent, like an outsider. (In a previous post I even admitted I didn’t seem to have the same reverence for it as others) Nobody made me feel that way, I just did. And for once I gave myself permission to feel I belong. (Not just think it, but feel it) Even if I did it in my own way. I didn’t measure myself as much by the yardstick of other peoples’ experience. And rather ironically, that lead to me understanding so much more about how other people feel about Shelter Valley. It is difficult to describe right now what that feels like. But it feels pretty awesome.

Welcome home, indeed.

Nightmares

Because I take melatonin to help me sleep at night, sometimes if I hit a patch where I’m stressed out (like the run up to a festival, perhaps), I end up having incredibly vivid, almost lucid dreams. Not dreams where I’m lucid enough to know that I’m dreaming, but am nonetheless far more aware of myself than I normally am. Dreams where ordinarily I would be more disconnected from the content, but instead am experiencing the dream in a much more visceral way. The results can be very disturbing.

Saturday, I posted to Facebook about my experiences sleeping in a tiny pup tent a few years ago, and how my resulting claustrophobia caused me to spend two nights in a row in the throes of an anxiety attack (for roughly 8 hours at a time). It was difficult to even think about it, let alone write about it.

At the same time, I was hearing about the earthquakes in Italy and seeing footage of the rubble.

That night, I dreamt I was being crushed to death by a collapsing building.

I don’t just mean this was in the vague sense- I mean I was being slowly compressed, and I thought to myself “I am going to feel my skull shatter and my bones crushed” and I let out a blood-curdling scream of utter despair and terror.

I woke up on the floor, with a bleeding head wound and bruises all over my body. (Either because I fell or because I threw myself on the floor. Hard.)

It was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever experienced. Terrifying because it seemed so real and I felt a very real sense of my own impending death. But also: the realization that people might have died this way. (I only hope that most people who are crushed to death go quickly, and not in the way I imagined) It was a terrifying empathy that haunted me for days afterwards. This could have been someone’s actual experience. And the idea of that upsets me a great deal.

It also upsets me that my body is once again betraying me and becoming mobile while I sleep. This isn’t even the first time I’ve had nightmares like this: about a decade ago, when I was living with Phil and sleeping in a loft bed, the affects of having the ceiling only a few feet from my head slowly got to me. I dreamt I was being crushed. I dove towards the floor one night, but luckily got caught up in the sheets and wedged between the door and the bed (it was a really small room). It disturbed Phil so much that he modified the bed to make it lower.

A psychoanalyst would have a field day with this (a psychoanalyst probably will have a field day with this), it’s such a terrible metaphor for my worst moments of anxiety- the feeling of being crushed or smothered. In the daytime, I can examine my thoughts, I can call out my own fears and paranoia. But at night, I’m at the mercy of my own sub-conscious. Sometimes I wonder: am I really dealing with my fears, or am I just suppressing them? Are these nightmares just leftover scraps, or things that I just don’t want to face?

“What have you been up to lately?”

I can’t scrapbook this. Facebook it. Instagram it. How do I brag about how I feel I’ve affected change at the core of my being, and the very beliefs about myself that have long held me back? When somebody asks what I’ve been doing lately, how do I encapsulate my excitement of being liberated from those beliefs, as well as finding validation of my beliefs about the universe, and venturing down a philosophical path (Buddhism)? How do I describe the difference between my quiet, unspoken agonies and now my quiet, unspoken inspirations?

“What have you been up to lately?”

Working. I’ve been returned to a much older project (one I was on years ago, in a lesser capacity) as both a designer and producer. I am learning production tasks, and I’m excited about that. It helps that the project is VERY small (which comes with its own problems, but oh well), so I don’t feel I’m being hurled into the deep end this time. If anything, I have the opposite problem- my workload gets too slow and I get easily distracted.

I am taking every opportunity right now to learn valuable skills- incorporating better math into my design, learning how to do a/b tests to figure out what players want, etc. I have more creative control over this project, so I’m pushing a little harder this time. And accepting my mistakes. The type of game I’m working on doesn’t really have a tried and true formula (arguably, this specific game is a mix of formulas) so I have to accept that many things I come up with will not yield results. I mean hell, the game is like 5 years old, so I can’t expect miracles.

I’m learning to be more comfortable asking for things from people. How to be gracious but decisive. I am a naturally stubborn person, and even though I try to keep that in check, I also don’t hide it either. (It’s a lot harder to boss around a woman you KNOW is going to be a tough sell when you try to dissuade her from something)

I’ve become a lot more…passionately political about gender. Especially as a woman in her 30s who has yet to bear children, and is working in a male-dominated industry. I have a great deal of privilege as a white person, and am acutely aware of how the world sees me as a woman. I’m tired of stereotypes and cliches. I have proudly entered 3rd Wave Feminism: I will not apologize for being emotionally affected by the reductive portrayal of my gender. (Sorry, not sorry.)

I still have moments of serious doubt and disorientation. I spent a long time defining my own identity by the things I couldn’t do. My anxiety affected how I looked at myself. I am still the same person I ever was- perhaps moreso- but there is less in the way. And while at times that’s exhilarating, other times it’s scary or upsetting, especially when the part of me that more clearly wants things comes into conflict with the part of me that is still stuck behind certain manufactured limitations that stop me from asking for them (if that makes sense). Sometimes I struggle to relate to the same people I did even 5 years ago.

Some people always wondered why, if I was so smart and passionate, I didn’t do x, y or z. They didn’t realize things were holding me back. So if they see me moving forward, it probably makes sense to them.

Other people maybe just saw me as the person in the corner who always showed up, but didn’t talk much. In their case, they might see more of a change. (Although, in certain situations, I’m still that person)

(And of course people who know me well have a front row seat)

All of these things have dominated my mind lately. My mind is in a quiet, but determined, march towards peace. One tiny victory at a time, day by day. Therapy session by therapy session where somebody with a shitload of patience has allowed himself to be my emotional punching bag for the past five years. (And given I’m becoming less inhibited about my temperament, and prone to emotional turbulence in this transitional period, I think maybe he ain’t seen nothing yet, as the song goes)

It’s hard for people to talk about these sorts of internal struggles and triumphs. And I wish they would. I miss comparing battle scars, I miss commiserating. It’s harder to work it into a conversation now, with how little we see each other.

“What have you been up to lately?”

Trying very hard to be me. And occasionally winning.

Accepting that I’m Me

I have a bit of an addiction to inadequacy. I’ve met so many awesome people in my life- musicians, artists, writers, nerds, very talented mental health professionals- and I look at their circles or their lifestyles or their habits and constantly think “Man, that looks awesome. I wish I could have that. I wish I could be that.”

Like, I think if were just more committed to my writing, or music, or gaming or whatever that I would be a better person. Or maybe a more likeable person. These people have lives that look more exciting than my own.

But those lives aren’t as flawless or exciting or easy as they seem.

And even though those people clearly want me to be wholly in with both feet in the same way that their peers are, they haven’t yet deserted me for it. More often than not, I’m the one that’s backed away. I’m the one that feels like I don’t belong, even when nobody is specifically telling me that, or even implying it. The minute I feel like I don’t match, I withdraw.

But it’s not until I openly admit that, that it becomes clear that who I actually am is something that people value. My quirks and nuances. The things that I do every day that I think are flighty or slightly manic or batshit insane. There are people who seriously dig that shit. It always surprises me. I don’t realize it until I apologize for being me, and they step in and ask me not to throw that away.

Our childhood and television and the media in general tout all sorts of narratives that make us think that our lives have to be something in particular. That our lives have to play out a certain way, have events in a certain order. We’re convinced of what’s glamourous and what isn’t. What’s romantic and what isn’t. What’s awesome and exciting, and what isn’t.

I had an inkling in my early teens that I didn’t have to be a certain way. I wish I had known just how many ideas about “how you should live your life” are complete bullshit.

It’s about what makes you happy, and at peace with the universe. It’s about what you want. It’s about what I want. I am trying to figure out what works for me, and what I want. And in the meantime, also trying to accept that who I am has a meaning and a resonance with people.

I’m reminded of a Pema Chodron quote (rather ironically she is a big deal in the Shambhala Community) that I found via a video about Tracee Ellis Ross:
https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fblackvoicesdotcom%2Fvideos%2F10154503095617565%2F&show_text=0&width=560

Maybe I should make an unconditional relationship with myself.

How I Spent My Easter Weekend

The past few days I, like many people I’m sure, have been caught in a personal hell. Watching the Ghomeshi trial play out has been tantamount to a PTSD flashback of the worst things that have ever happened to me. I have lost count of how many times I have sobbed over my keyboard. How many times I’ve paced my apartment, trembling with rage. How many times I’ve felt guilty, angry, ashamed or depressed.

I’ve seen a lot of supportive posts. I’ve seen a lot of posts calling for solidarity and change and hope. And I’ve seen a lot of posts that seem to presume that everyone just wants to break the legal system, overthrow civil liberties, yadda yadda yadda. As though those who are upset with the verdict are radicals out to destroy everything we hold dear.

Which is ridiculous.

I think victims (and potential victims) feel desperate. They feel helpless. They want something, anything, to make them feel safe to tell their stories. Maybe they’re looking at this case and saying to themselves “Could I have done any better? Is my memory better than hers? What if I made the wrong choice? What if I forgot about something? What if I accidentally discussed the case with somebody?” Maybe it really DOESN’T matter whether the witnesses in this case were dirty liars or just flaky people. Maybe what matters is that many victims (many of them women) might look at this case and be terrified. Not because they think the Defense Lawyer was a monster, but because they feel inadequate. They STILL feel ashamed. They STILL, in some small way, are afraid that it is their fault or that they would have trouble proving otherwise. And they now have a vivid image of what it would feel like to be on that witness stand and be forced to stand behind the conviction that they were victimized. They don’t want that. They don’t want somebody to use their own insecurities against them, to have their shame laid bare. So suddenly the options are to face that scenario, or keep quiet. Living with the memory of sexual assault is a toxic mix of fear, shame and rage. Wanting to be safe but wanting to be heard. Wanting to avoid but also wanting to confront.

It’s also important to remember women are not hysterical or indecisive. Many of them are raised to take on the responsibility of preventing sexual assault by themselves. With the implication being, that if it happens to them, they must have done something wrong or failed to do something. And if they manage to fight through that shame, they’re blamed for not coming forward sooner. Or for staying in toxic relationships. Or for taking days, months or years to realize that someone has used them.

And now, it seems, not only are victims tasked with preventing sexual assault, they are also expected to come up with solutions for how the system is to protect them or punish offenders. Many lawyers and law enthusiasts are sneering from the sidelines at any solution victims propose, and offering virtually no alternatives. Many of these victims are not lawyers or law makers. They are, as I said before, just desperate for change. It should not be on them to fix this, but they are doing the best that they can. They are owed a little bit of patience and support.

January

I’ve made a habit of New Years Reflections, and I’ve been doing them almost since I started blogging back in the early 2000s. I have, at odd times, made New Years Resolutions, but I rarely remember what they are by year’s end. Also, New Years Resolutions are stupid. How am I supposed to learn to like myself more if I keep convincing myself there are things in my life I need to “fix”?

Last year around this time I was, well, left to take on some big responsibilities with a project at work. I knew it was going to be hard, potentially impossible, so I said to myself “Just try to make it to March.” I knew I would be able to pay off my student loan debt by then, so it would be one hurdle cleared if I had a nervous breakdown and needed to quit my job.

March came and went, and I didn’t die (much as thought I might) and I thought “Let’s see if I can make it to summer. Then I can pay off the rest of my debt!” And I did.

The job was not easy. It is not a fun job or a job that most people would want. It is definitely not a fulfilling job. There were a lot of things beyond my control- decisions being made above me, increasingly short timelines, etc. I could handle certain parts of the job, but other parts of it were beyond me and were not possible to just learn in a short period of time. I struggled and made many mistakes. I had to make decisions that other people didn’t like. Hell, I had to make decisions, period. Which it turns out I’m not very good at. I had to accept failure. I had to accept the fact that what I was working on was never going to be a runaway success. (I didn’t design the game, I just helped update it) It was frustrating, but it DID force me to face some of my social fears and address them.

I had a busy summer- a family reunion, the wedding of a cherished childhood friend, trips, meditation retreats, classes- which I had to work around a work schedule that was mentally and emotionally draining. I had to make some sacrifices. And I sunk a little farther into isolation.

And here again I stand on the threshold of a new year and ask myself: did I live, or did I just survive? What have a got? Is that even important? Am I really my job? Am I wasting my time and my talents, or am I just waiting for the right moment to make a change?

I am always looking for the good narrative. Which, frankly, is kind of stupid. Life isn’t always eloquent and doesn’t always come packaged with a delightful “lesson” or takeaway.

It occurred to me one day that I always try to make good on my circumstances. Even if I am so hesitant to admit it that I have trouble feeling the joy I’ve rightly earned from them. Why is that? Buddhism teaches us that desire causes suffering because we are so in a rush to be more or to have more in our lives that we overlook the present moment. I spend so much time punishing myself for NOT doing something or NOT being something that it seems like an indulgence to do otherwise. Often I post New Years “Reflections” where I feel the need to frame everything in terms of what I learned. (Though there have been a few times where I had a lot to crow about!) As though I’m in need of a self-lecture. Hell, last year the song I posted with my entry was “Humble and Kind” by Lori McKenna. I mean come on. I worry so much about the disconnection I feel from everyone else that it causes me to be even more disconnected. And I feel terribly guilty for it.

Perhaps I only need to ask myself one question: can I appreciate how I am living right this very moment?

There’s plenty to appreciate: a new prime minister, a new Star Wars movie with a female hero I would have loved as a child, a good job (if not an enjoyable one), a good life, a wonderful husband, lovely friends and family and an ability to put my words down. I often feel a deep loneliness and that is tragic. But the good news is that I am not actually alone. And this moment doesn’t need to be the sum of all its parts. I’m alive and I’m here and the blank page awaits.

Thoughts on the Niquab

Certain Muslims hate it because they are painfully aware of the religious and cultural implications of it.

Some people are against it because it’s vaguely scary to them and ‘you’re not supposed to cover your face’ because it makes you look like a bank robber or something. (I don’t really get that one)

Other people are against it because they hate all Muslims and paint them all with the same brush and are using this issue as an excuse to be xenophobic. ‘Our country, our rules’ and that sort of bullshit. So now Muslim women are getting harassed in the streets more and more. Racial slurs are being painted on political signs.

Some Muslim women wear it out of modesty, some out of a form of Feminism, in that they don’t want to be judged via their appearance. Some of the women wearing them were BORN in Canada. I do not know how many women wearing it were “forced” to wear it, or what constitutes force in most peoples’ minds.

Some people see it as some kind of edging of boundaries with regards to practicing religion.

Other people see it as a matter of person rights, especially for women: is it just or fair to tell a woman how to dress or to imply that she’s too dumb to understand how ‘oppressed’ she is? Furthermore, would this be a slippery slope where we’re just reinforcing a culture of superficiality? The idea that appearance matters? Which just gives more fuel to those who seek to reject it? Isn’t it more dangerous to define people by their appearance rather than the content of their character?

And finally, we now live in a world where many people want to be more conscious of what offends others, and also more conscious of what offends themselves. But that consciousness can sometimes end up in a weird place. Who do we accommodate: the Muslims who have made it part of their identity, or the Muslims who find it deeply offensive?

This is about the comfort of those involved. Primarily the women actually wearing the niquab. Their comfort. Their safety. If one’s dress constitutes a statement, wouldn’t that statement be covered under freedom of speech? And what about racial slurs directed at them? Are those also protected?

For those of us who do not have a deep understanding of the cultural and religious history and symbolism of this piece of clothing, do we really have a right to judge it any more harshly than we do any other piece of dress that makes us uncomfortable? Jeggings anyone? The mankini?

I guess you could argue that a Catholic nun is a painful reminder of all of the horrible things the Catholic church has done to women and children over the years, but would you consider it justifiable to direct all of that pain towards one if you saw her in the street? Would you run up and tell her she was deluded and attempt to rip the habit from her head?

But I’ll Try

It’s been a rough couple of weeks at work, and this week promises to be rougher. I’ve had a lot of trouble sleeping, a lot of trouble adjusting to some changes in my routine that shouldn’t affect me as much as they do. With such a cacophony in my head, it’s been difficult to concentrate on a book, or to meditate.

I’ve been struggling to get through The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron, a short book about Shambhala practice. I’ve just been managing a few pages at a time on the bus, while my brain is consumed with anxiety.

I was struck by the chapter on tonglen. It’s a form of mediation practice that involves focusing on pain and suffering on the in-breath, and on space and peace on the out-breath. It’s about taking it in, rather than rejecting it. (A better description is here)

On a lark, I tried, during my morning meditation, focusing on my stress and take it in, rather than trying to run from it. It was surprisingly cathartic. (None of the Shambhala courses I’ve taken so far have gotten to tonglen, but I now look forward to getting better acquainted with it) I feel like ever since I read that chapter, I’ve lingered on my own pain just a little bit longer, not with fear but with curiousity/acceptance.

This afternoon on the bus, after a VERY long and stressful day, I was continuing to read the book. I had one of those moments. One of those moments where pain and beauty sort of collide. I was reading:

“Knowing yourself or studying yourself just means that it’s your experience of joy, it’s your experience of pain, your experience of relief and ventilation, and your experience of sorrow. That’s all we have and that’s all we need in order to have a living experience of the dharma- to realize that the dharma and our lives are the same thing.”

And Gordon Lightfoot’s “I’m not sayin” was playing on the radio. And even though I felt beat down and shitty, I thought “How perfect is this?” How lucky am I, to be a human being, feeling human things, and not starving or threatened. How perfect to be imperfect and aware.

I’m not sayin’ I’ll be sorry
For all the things that I might say that make you cry
I can’t say I’ll always do
The things you want me to
I’m not sayin’ I’ll be true but I’ll try…

Common & Uncommon Ground

I was reading back through a bunch of blog posts recently of a close friend, and was startled back to reality by how different her blog is. It’s all about her family, her kids, her marriage…it kind of made me feel like a narcissist. It also made me realize I don’t actually read other peoples’ blogs as much as I used to.

To be fair, a few years ago I started to use this blog to work out my emotions towards myself and my anxiety. It became about my journey towards better self-awareness, instead of running away from it and absorbing myself in other peoples’ problems, which is kind of what I had done for years.

Years ago, I was one of the first people in my group of friends to have a blog, and for a long time pretty much everyone I knew had one at some point or another. Later the Internet (and us, I guess) transitioned towards a less personal, less raw public persona. Stuff like this fell to the background, forgotten. Some of us kept on with it.

But we’re so much more hesitant than we used to be with sharing things.

I like that I am mitigating my anxiety better. I like that I have a better idea of who I am than I did a while ago.

But my real life interactions with people still give me trouble. I still struggle to start conversations…in fact, it rarely occurs to me anymore to just call someone out of the blue. I don’t really talk on the phone anymore, except to my parents. I sometimes talk on IM at home, but only once in a while. I talk to people when I visit them and listen to what they want to say. I still let them direct the conversation. I rarely ask questions about them, and struggle to honestly and openly answer questions about myself.

(So if I am a narcissist, I’m not a very good one)

It’s not that I don’t care, I care very much actually, my brain just can’t seem to formulate things on the spot.

As of this moment, I’m very, very close to paying off my debt. Soon I will be officially in the green. And do you know what that means? It means that, even though I am not very happy with my job right now, for the first time in my life, money is not a huge concern.

My husband also recently got a promotion and a slight raise, which will probably increase as time goes on. We are now at a comfortable point where we can start saving for things.

It also means that if I DID want to leave my job, to look for something else or to go back to school, I would have the luxury of doing so.

And…and I hesitate to say this, lest it be taken for more than it is…if I were to get pregnant, I could safely save up money, no big deal. I’d have to move (which would suck, but this is a tiny apartment), but other than that, we could handle it. Please don’t take that as a statement of “Yay! Want babies!” or “To hell with babies, I’m just covering my own ass!” Because I really have no clear position on the idea at this time. I am very aware that if I became a mother, some part of me would gleefully take the opportunity to not look after myself.

To put it bluntly, I want to deal with my shit. I want to be present for the next steps of my life. I want to be more present in my relationships, with my husband, with everything.

So in a way I am catching up to other people, just in a roundabout sort of way. Will it be easy for them to understand this? I don’t know. I think that’s what terrifies me. I’m over here, and they’re over there. It’s getting harder and harder to find common ground.