Today I’m grateful that…

I had another breakdown, this one during a meeting, when the meeting reading was about arousal, pleasure, and learned responses. I wanted to leave the meeting, to run, and it took everything I had to stay. I found a post it to put over the square of this one guy that makes me uneasy and forced myself to share. Where else would I share this? So I did it! And in the process, I discovered something new, a new connection between what my dad expected of me and my lifelong feeling of being responsible for addressing male arousal. I feel wretched. I’m fucking angry and disgusted and so so full of grief. I don’t know what to do with it. I know the only answer is to endure it, to remain open to the pain. 

The only way out of pain is through pain, what horseshit. God what I would give for the solution to be anything but more pain. Like what the fuck, it feels so unfair. I’m already suffering and anything I do to give myself solace is not the answer! I just have to sit in it, to “process it”, to grieve. Dogshit, it’s all dogshit. I just want to play Story of Seasons WITHOUT knowing I’m doing it to avoid my life, why can’t it just be what it is? Or better, why can’t that help heal me! And I know it gets better, I’ve done this all before, I know sitting in it is what works but Goddamn fuck shit ACK.

I have a slow growing bitterness towards having to deal with this CSA trauma. It’s a bitterness that borders on self pity, probably is pity even. I know other people have had it worse, and who am I to complain about it when I have a good life now? But there’s this whiney part of me that just won’t stop pouting that I have to deal with this. That doesn’t listen to me when I say life isn’t fair and that this will make us stronger/more compassionate in the future. And I’m trying to reframe “whiney” to “plaintive and defeated”. I can tell I’m bullying myself with these words, trying to put my feelings down because I’m ashamed of them. Writing this out has actually helped a lot, I hadn’t realized I felt this way and just came up with how to reframe it! What a whirlwind.

Cubu and I had a big talk today that was my fault. I got jealous over him playing videogames with friends at lunch 😔 and didn’t blow up but definitely spiraled into a “what am I doing with this permachild” hole. I’m not really jealous of him playing, I’m just threatened by how different we are and what that means for our future, and it comes out whenever he plays games. And come out it did. I cried, he cried, we hugged and made up. Feeling closer but in a fragile way, and I’m in real need of stability right now so kind of kicking myself for all of that happening. 

A shirt was printed with Ludvig’s art last year by the American Glass Guild. I found out last week, emailed them, and it came in today. To see him on a shirt, knowing this is as close to him as I ever can get nowadays. We used to smoke pipes together as we worked so I lit mine and started puffing as I worked on a window. Normally I can feel him with me but I couldn’t today and it was really crushing. Am I done being able to feel him? Is he mad at me for having bad relations with his wife? I don’t even believe in this stuff but it haunts me. I just miss him so much, I’m desperate for any sort of connection and grieving that it can’t happen.