Meet Fiver...Hazel's new buddy (for you Watership Down aficionados....heh)

So, things are picking up a bit. I'm writing a lot...there are things coming up, sure, but the writing seems to be taking care of a lot of it.

I'm also surprisingly busy...in good ways, which is nice. I mentioned to someone that I felt very alone, and they asked me if I felt lonely and I had to say (with a touch of surprise), "No." So I am alone without feeling lonely, which I guess is new. And I do spend a fair amount of time with people, too...which again, is nice. I've got a few dinner dates this week, had a lunch and a dancing thing over the weekend, and tonight I actually begged off an invite so I could plow back into the novel, which I'm very happy with.

I'm also rediscovering books...and actually finding a few fiction writers that I'm liking again. For awhile there, the recommendations I was getting from others simply weren't working for me. I don't know what it was exactly, but I seem to do much better when I *don't* read what everyone else is raving about but more follow my nose.

I'm really liking Neil Gaiman right now, as a result. And I'm laughing because I didn't have much to say when an agent asked me who to compare my stuff to....and now I would know and be able to tell that person that it's got some parallels to Mr. Gaiman's work, in terms of the style and themes of his particular corner of the urban fantasy milieu.

Did I mention I'm really liking how my own writing is going right now? Somehow, it's just exploded in the last few weeks. Ideas that were seeming pretty good to me a few months back now strike me as stale when I see the stuff that's coming up to replace them. Weirdly it's both darker and lighter, and the female character in particular has just sort of snapped into life, and is running much more of the show, which is fun.

So, just wanted to post something when I was feeling pretty good for a change, instead of only waiting to puke onto cyberspace....which tends to be my wont.

Thanks for all the well wishes!

xoxo

So I tried something different tonight....I still had a million things to do, of course. I am moving out of a house and need to find a new tenant for it as we are breaking the lease and it is the only way I will get even a small amount of my money back. I am moving into a new apartment. I took the bunny to the vet today, after getting up at 4am to go in to work early because I was behind on my projects from showing the house and making runs to Goodwill to get rid of all of the crap my ex-partner so generously left behind, vacuuming rugs and cleaning out refridgerators and preparing for meetings and then running those same meetings and setting up and canceling utilities and trying to negotiate my way out of high interest rates and joint credit cards and really, really trying to do it all without seeing my ex-partner, who is so angry his venom hits me when he leaves a simple note about the cat he left behind in a cold empty house to meow pitifully each time I show up to take yet another piece of furniture, his bunny friend, then that last box...

Tonight, I just stopped.

There were other things I could have done. I have movies to return and work to do for my job and a novel to edit and people to email and call and an apartment to set up and a bunny to comfort and...

I stopped instead.

In doing so, even for a few breaths here and there, I realize I'm very, very quiet inside. Very quiet. Almost scary quiet. In that quiet, I see things of course. I see that a large part of me is relieved to drop the act....not so much the "oh so competent act" although I know that one's there, too. No, it's the opposite one, actually. The one where I pretend that all of this is an unbearable drama, that I need to buy into the power games, that I really am upset because he used the cat as a tool to get to me....

I mean yeah...okay. But that's not it. It's really not.

I remember a time when I first came to Portland, when I remembered what it was like to live without these power struggles. When I was happy just looking at a tree, when I didn't care who was right and who was better and who was worse and who was going to suffer for their sins and who wasn't. I realize how much I really sold myself down the river these past few months. Not just the usual "listening to other people," which is part of the mindgame, that idea that someone can "overpower" your perspective without your active involvement....no, instead I actually altered the state of being where I reside to accommodate someone else's. I did it even though it made me miserable, I did it out of some misguided sense of generosity, and despite the fact that that other worldview was entirely incompatible with my own values and priorities. I went along with the hierarchy in that reality, with the assumptions about "how life is" and the model for truth that informed that window onto the world. All of it looks cracked to me now, utterly flawed. So when I drop down into that muck, this tremendous sadness and anger swirls and swirls trying to get in, to reinforce that illusion to me.

And then I step above that, and hear...nothing. Complete silence. Often it is terrifying to me, and I step immediately back into the muck (which I'm sure is why I made that compromise in the first place), but I am remembering, and with that, comes peace.

Of course, the peace is scary too. That frightened part of me, all the voices, try to make stories out of the peace. They tell me that I'm meant to be alone, that I'll never be happy with another person, that I'll always take their noise over my silence, their fear and self-hate over my smiling at trees and forgetting myself totally. That I can't trust my judgment, that I'm destined to relive my childhood trying to comfort a father and a sister who could never be comforted, no matter how much I tried to change myself for them.

But those are just more stories...a way of trying to control the experience, to make it meaningful to those smaller, more fearful parts of myself. But those aren't the parts of me I need to be comforting.

Anyway, it feels like things will be quieter now.

This weekend may be a lot of writing and meditating, and not much else.

....once the piano is moved, and the yard work arranged and the yard cleaned up and the movies returned and the cat checked on at the neighbors who were kind enough to take him in so he wouldn't be alone, and the project and meetings get done at work and the presentation gets designed and then written and the phonecalls to the utilities and the credit cards made and my driver's license renewed and the parking ticket paid and the budget recalculated and the car registered and the clothes purchased for work, and...and...and....

Sometimes, you gotta just laugh.

Everything is so amazingly up and down...I haven't been through a serious break up in some time, is this what they are like? I suppose it must be.

And yet, the feelings are incredibly mixed. The feeling of relief continues to spread, intermingled with these stabbing reminders and memories that all add up to a coherent story about why this unfolded the way it did, who's at fault for what bits and pieces of the story, where things may or may not have gone differently. It's one of those look backwards and realize that you knew this, you were playing the denial game, the chicken game....and that knowledge helps you, how?

And then there are just the random things...a friend of mine last night saying, "yeah, well you know he did all that so there'd be no debate about it...so you'd kick him out and that would be the end of it, no turning back." Ouch. And yet it rings true. When someone wants out of a relationship so badly that they're willing to cross those kinds of boundaries, it's a pretty sad testament to how unhappy they were and how trapped they felt. So now I have to face the fact that I was holding onto someone who wasn't holding back, which is one of those humbling reflections that really just have to be borne.

And yet, even that is too simple. Because he was holding on, too...just not to me. I am guilty of the same thing, honestly...of holding on to an idea and a future instead of the actual person I was with, marching them through the steps to get where I wanted to go, treating them as a "plot puppet" as it were, without even being sure that the future being put forward was one I wanted or the one I'd settled on as being right for the two of us. After all, it was *his* vision of the future I was trying to paint....what he'd told me he wanted from day 1 of our being together. The problem was, he either only wanted that in the abstract, or he didn't want it with me.

But I definitely wasn't right in myself. I was definitely trying to construct something, instead of experiencing myself as I was.

It feels actually over now, which is progress. It will not unfold completely until I've managed to move out, and really separate all of my stuff out into neat piles, mine and his. And it will not unfold completely until I've set up a new place somewhere else and don't have to manage anything jointly with him anymore, financial or otherwise. Then maybe I can take a deep breath and figure out what it is I really want, not what it is I think I need to want in order to keep someone I love in my life.

That's a relief too. I figure I can be alone for as long as need be, until I understand that compulsion to not be alone before I end up truly miserable. It's kind of nice to look forward to a period of just focusing on myself, to really dive into the writing and art and start getting some stuff out there again. I'll definitely have more time...no odd pretexts for fights right before a deadline or in the middle of a day slotted for writing. No insinuations that I "care more about my writing" than a human being (which is such an odd accusation, when you think of it!). No more hiding in coffee shops just to get out a few pages. No more trying to divide my attention between an external drama that largely felt contrived and the drama I'm trying to create for entertainment, love or simply because it's what I do.

So, progress.

The worst of it is, my bunny will lose his kitty pal.

Sigh.

I'll be getting the thumping foot and the flashing butt for weeks, I'm sure.