Beatty

Oh hey.  It’s a wind-whistling night, here in Beatty.  I can’t believe we’re leaving here to return home, in the morning.  I feel like we just got here.

We’ve eaten some good food made by me and Ming.  Took that walk yesterday toward the B of Beatty, and I danced in the sun the day before.  I’ve skillfully rested from home stuff and Bartlett emotional labor.  And I got needed perspective on our regular life.

Something wonderful about travel is how I can see things about my home life that I couldn’t from home.  So I like to make lists, plans, and resolutions, with this special knowledge.  And write, of course.

Some resolutions I made this time are to have more rituals with Ming, more dates, more fun.  To nourish myself enthusiastically and heal from grief.  Also I want to study the histamine list and add more food diversity to my meals, and eat fresh rosemary from the garden, in food or as tea.

What do you want more or less of, in your life?  It’s always a good day to start over.

grief

I spent part of the day in grief, very sad, sometimes crying with my entire body.  That crying I refer to as aerobic crying, as my whole body is involved in the expressing of the intense emotion.  It’s exhausting, almost like I’m a baby tiring out my body, to help me rest afterward.

I was afraid of losing a close friend who I’m having conflict with.  Grief about my mom got mixed in, so the world seemed intolerable.  I had no interest in it–in fact, I hated it.  I had the strong feeling that without my friend, I couldn’t handle anything.  The world was way too bright, complicated, brutal, and painfully weird.  The world was wrong, without the friend I love, and not worth working for.

So I felt that, half the day, in a few sessions.  Mostly indoors, suffering hard.  I thought about what a black box is.  You can see what goes in and comes out, and all the behavior around it, but you don’t know what’s in that box.  A big problem with my friend is how he can’t talk about emotional reality, especially the relationship he and I are doing.

I’m left guessing what’s inside the black box.  Since I’m already doing a fuckton of emotional labor, it’s not working well, that I’m doing guesswork too.  I’m doing my part and then doing his part.  It’s painful, to carry such an unbalanced load, and the lack of clarity causes other problems.

coma

Kind of like having a conversation with someone who’s in a coma.  I say what I need to say, then guess what the other person would say, if they could talk.  The coma person is lying in their hospital bed, silent. I’m making their part up, and could be very wrong.  I could use all of my intelligence and energy, but that doesn’t mean I’m guessing right.

The difference is my friend isn’t in a coma–he’s a well person, up and about, who has language.  But somehow that part of him got so emotionally damaged, he’s not ok.  The problem is to the point of disabling him.  I feel compassion for that, but it’s not working well for me, to be incapacitated by the harm.

Love to the truth tellers, the people who aren’t talking, the aerobic criers, the people in comas.  Love to Ming who makes dinner and faces all that grief.  To Beatty, myself, this howling wind.  Love to whoever hurt my friend so bad that he can’t be honest about what he’s feeling or doing.

video

Ming took a video of me yesterday, doing show and tell of my emotional first aid kit.  It’s still uploading to youtube, hours later.  I’ll share with you, when it’s ready.  Here’s a test photo for the framing, in this cute enclosed porch of this place in Beatty.

Oh yeah, and I made this poetry meme about my voices being mostly nice.