Today I’m grateful for feeling…

Nervous about my early morning river swim tomorrow. I want so badly to enjoy it, for there to be no reluctance in sliding this into my routine. But I’m plagued with the “what if”s about it: what if the water is too cold/I don’t like it/I forget how to swim/my boss says I’m too soggy when I show up to work. This seems like a minor emotion, and a lot of the worries are ridiculous, but it takes a lot of energy to stop the anxiety train once it gets going. 

Scared of this coming Thursday. *For context: Cubu has been supposed to work from home one day a week but with my issues around masturbation and control, I’ve been preventing him and he’s allowed me to. It’s been maybe a year since he’s worked from home, and it was definitely rough before then. I’d go to work triggered out of my mind, say nothing to anybody, finish my shift’s work in 30 minutes, say I’m sick and come home early. Sometimes I hoped I’d catch him in the act so I could shame him. I also dreaded that. Of course it never happened. But I’d get home, kick him out of the house for 15 minutes, fume, let him back in, and fume/bitch the rest of the day in the same room he was in so he knew how unhappy he had “made” me. If one trick seemed stale and he seemed to not care, I’d invent a new one (only half-consciously) to make him care. And I WAS unhappy. I could barely breathe, my heart rate would stay above 100 just sitting in bed that entire 7 hours. I couldn’t control my thoughts and I’d spend that day thinking I was going to die, what am I doing with this guy, this guy is just like my dad and has been deceiving me this whole time, I need to leave leave LEAVE but if I leave he can do it again …. and on and on. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it for weeks, gauging my progress. The last thing I want to happen is a reaction like I used to have, but I feel different than I did last year in subtle ways. Today I told Cubu I might be okay if he worked from home this Thursday. It got really tense for both of us, both of us dreading if I’m wrong. A large part of me wants to just continue as we are, to not address it, not rock the equilibrium we’ve created around the issue. Most of me wants this actually. But my higher power doesn’t, my future self doesn’t want to be trapped by this, doesn’t want to keep trapping someone I love. So I guess we’ll try it out…

Feelin’ good…

• I’ve begun to take up space during sex? This is very new to me and seems to be a byproduct of not always catering to other’s needs, or having a growing awareness of my own? In the past I’ve let my body be a vessel for his (any person’s) desire, going along with it and viewing my pleasure as secondary, if present at all. The last two encounters I’ve felt like there’s another option: assume he’ll do what feels good to him and I am allowed to do the same? That we can just feel good *with* each other rather than *for* each other???  For example, last time I realized I wanted a certain position/flow and pushed for it. And this time I didn’t put my pleasure second but kept it equal. It was surreal, I still kinda don’t believe it happened. I hope this trend continues because above all, it feels so. much. healthier. Something in me knows this is how it should be. Things feel like they’re changing.
• Cubu and I had an honest conversation about masturbating that was barely tense and didn’t make my heart rate spike at all. I was even able to promise that I wouldn’t freak out and immediately break up with him if he does. I have been trying to make this promise for years and haven’t been able to say it with assurance. I feel crazy just writing this down, and knowing that this is a milestone for me and that I’m really proud. Boyfriends since 13 and this has always been an issue, I’ve never been able to remotely think this let alone know it’s true. I choose to approach it with kindness. 
• I feel freed from my shame regarding how much I work at the library. I used to do more than my job, picking up slack from multiple coworkers’ every day, and made sure to do it *perfectly*. When I went through this recent grief wave, I really went into bare-minimum mode (simply doing my job description). The past month I’ve been feeling better yet haven’t picked back up the amount of work I was doing. This has been wracking me with guilt and shame, of being a poor worker, of not being valuable to my place of work, of being a bad person because I wasn’t putting in 200%. But something about it didn’t feel right. Reading Codependent No More, it explicitly said that style of working is reflective of codependence! I felt the shame kind of slide off of me. I’ll continue how I have been: staying in my lane; doing extraneous tasks when they’re asked of me but not immediately assuming responsibility; doing quality work but not rushing at a breakneck pace just so I can take care of another, slower worker’s section – if I get to it, I get to it. Most of all, I don’t feel like a shitty person for simply doing my job.
• really got a hold of my meal prep this week, which I had been stalling on for a week. I tried out a new configuration of chicken and vegetables and really look forward to the next month of dinners! I’m grateful to have access to healthy foods, for the labor behind them getting to me, and the money to buy them.