Adventures du jour!
Yesterday I hit a wall and felt like I’d gone through a reset – from going through enough changes that my brain felt discontinuitous. I did minor tasks all day, some writing for the class, some editing on the story, completed some routine tasks, studied more, worked on yoga, etc.
Then Ray and I went out for ramen and it felt like everything got magically all better. We talked a lot about what it feels like to be us, similar yet different; I’d say it was sweet but there were moments where we both said, “Yes, I am *very* careful around you when you’re in THAT mood.”
It’s nice to be known that well. And, too, to know how to recall the other person back when we need each other.
It’s nice to slurp down pork broth that I didn’t have to slave over (although mine *was* better, because we went to the comfort-food ramen chain here and not a hole in the wall blessed by the gods). It’s nice to chew on boba and listen to each others’ current obsessions. Plus I got Ray to brainstorm some story ideas with me. She’s fantastic at it, and I’ve been picking her brain regularly since she was about eight.–Although I needed short story ideas and she was in novel-length mode. “If you build an underwater city and it’s not Bioshock-esque or Atlantis, then you’re probably writing a novel.” She doesn’t know how an unusual setting messes with the length of a story, if you’re doing right by the story. It’s *possible* to write a short story with a very unusual setting, but not at the same length. That’s normally fine, but I need about 4x the depth on this one than I usually write, and aw hell no am I not going to juggle all that and risk committing another novel while I have the WIP to finish.
Stayed up late, woke up stupid early, and felt refreshed. Mentally healed from the reset, if that makes sense.
Yoga: I had a jump forward overnight and had more flexibility in the upper back today. Unfortunately I think I went nuts with it this morning and strained some of the muscles around the fronts of my hips in one of the balance poses. Just because I can bend a little more in one area doesn’t mean that I can magically do the pose better, because more flexibility in one area sometimes leads to strain in another. Oops. I don’t think I did it too too far, though; the fronts of the hips just feel sore and not prickly/burny.
Knees that were freaking sore yesterday were doable today, still sore, but I got through a bunch of reps into and out of horse stance without issues. I also got more flexibility on the forward extension of both legs in one of the balance poses, so I no longer look like I’m trying to clutch my knee to my chest but can stick my leg more or less out straight while holding it.
I’ll have to pay more attention to the process: do I make forward jumps on yoga after these mental resets? Is it actually related to the mental reset or just that I took a break for a day or two? Is it unrelated? Random? I may not be able to tell for certain, but I can observe.
Walking: Today was mostly a Marina day. She doesn’t want to have to do the rest of this scene. I reminded her that if she doesn’t find a way through, then none of the characters get to move forward, and she already knows about some of the good stuff. I was mostly just teasing her, though, and she mostly just wanted to brag about how she handled the first challenge in the scene–even though she knows that it’s just an illustration for the scope of what she can’t do (what nobody could have done) coming up.
I got my eye for textures back today on the walk today, too, which was nice, although I’m still fighting with the AI on the autofocus, trying to train it back to where it was. Little by little.
So every time your phone resets and you’re like, “GAH SO STUPID WHAT EVEN WHY DID THEY UPDATE THIS IT’S WORSE!!!” it may be that the AI you’ve been so carefully nurturing has been wiped out like gut flora after a case of food poisoning, and it needs to “grow back” again. You have my sympathies.
I’m finally getting back on my psychologist’s schedule. I told her I think I’m at a point where I don’t need regular therapy, still want to stay on meds (I’m almost out again and have been skipping; I can feel the strain), and want to meet to figure out how to handle a path ahead. It’s a FAR cry from when I first started going to her, like, literally. I would just cry through the whole session. She would say something true and kind and I’d hate myself for feeling grateful to hear it. Now it’s more like, “Oh yeah! And you’re another!”
What made me realize it was time was that I took a selfie this morning that made me go: “I think I’m happy.”
I had intended to take a picture of myself rolling my eyes. Instead I got a picture of me smiling with my eyes closed and an expression on my face that I’ve seen on other people, but not myself.
It’s not that happiness is the same as mental health or anything, but that I realized I’ve figured out how to get from a stressed-out nervous system to a non-stressed one. I’ve never had that before. It’s freaking weird. Pleasant. I can tell that I have to invest in it daily and guard it pretty ferociously, or I’ll get flipped back into “everything on fire all the time” mode again. And of course there are a number of things that can knock me down for at least a day or two.
But: I feel happy. In fact, I have the magical capacity not to feel my skin creep when the possibility of happiness arises. That’s new. I’ve always been cheerful in-spite-of, or hopeful in-spite-of. I’m bloody minded that way. Happiness was just a sword of Damocles hanging over my head, because someone in my life was bound to sabotage it. When things were definably bad, that’s when they felt safest.
I really ought to still be bitter. And I’ll no doubt hit bad times again in the future. But I’ll never not know what this feels like.–My first therapist tried to get me to recall what it felt like to be safe, versus what I felt with my ex. I couldn’t tell her. I probably still couldn’t tell her, but at least I know.
I may still get fooled by an asshole again, but it won’t be the same way. All of the ex’s influence depended on my not being able to escape my own stressed-out nervous system. Even moments of “relaxation” were tense, designed to put him at ease and push me into upset and instability.
Now I can say “No,” I can say, “I can’t do this tonight,” I can say, “Today I fail” and not keep desperately pushing onward, trying to force myself to accomplish goals, keep the peace, or set everyone else at ease. I can put my interests ahead of others’ desires and schedules. Or not. I can choose.
Unrelated but I liked it, from Borges’s Selected Nonfictions, “A Profession of Literary Faith”:
“…I have already written more than one book in order to write, perhaps, one page. The page that justifies me, that summarizes my destiny, the one that perhaps only the attending angels will hear when Judgment Day arrives.
“Simply: the page that, at dusk, upon the resolved truth of the day’s end, at sunset, with its dark and fresh breeze and girls glowing against the street, I would dare to read to a friend.”
Just so.