Adventures du jour!
Urgh. Last night was a bad one; I was doing great with the writing until I hit a particularly judgy character (not one of the main ones) who said something to Goth Girl that had me seeing red. I was too close to being overwhelmed with anger anyway and had to quit for the night as soon as I got the two characters separated. That was enough words in, so no big deal, but still disappointing.
Apparently judgy people make me want to burn it all down. Who knew?
I tried to let go of the anger, but WOW I was pissed. I finally just went to bed, feeling like I was in the throes of a not-a-migraine storm. I don’t get migraine headaches, but I do get visual auras accompanied by louder-than-usual ear ringing, fluid retention, feeling like people’s faces are melting (like, not a lot, just a bit soft and waxy), dizziness, and feeling like I’m out of my body or my arms/legs are further/closer than they really are. I usually only get these alongside bad sinus infections, but I haven’t really had a lot of those since I moved to Florida and none since I started doing so much yoga/walking. I had everything else going on. Eventually the storm broke and I just cried.
This morning I have the feeling of being post-not-a-migraine-hung-over, which is feeling extremely puffy, sore and stiff, lungs aching, bones in neck and back feeling like they’ve been scraped together, followed by some tell-tale symptoms that are TMI. Ear ringing is back to normal levels. I swear that the ringing in my ears is my body’s defense against migraines. I’ve done the thing where you thonk the back of your neck to stop the ringing in your ears and it worked but I got a migraine so bad that I was dry heaving. And because it’s me, I did it twice and successfully reproduced the migraine. No thank you.
While the storm was going on, I felt extremely unhuman, angry in a self-damaging (but not self-directed) way, very bitey, very isolated and abandoned. I know, now, that I could have reached out to a number of people for support. I mean, my daughter lives with me. She was literally right there. The conscious part of me could not get that far at the time. I’ve trained myself when I get past certain boundaries of emotion and behavior (mostly related to ADD, it seems) where I’ll find somewhere safe to hole up, wait out whatever it is, then do a review to try to repair whatever might have gone amuck. So go to bed and don’t talk to anyone = shutdown safety mode. It felt like both the wrong and right thing to do at the time.
One of the things that my ex did for me was handle the outside world when I got this way, from ADD or anger or whatever. Being him, of course he doubled down on it to make sure I felt incompetent and out of control as often as possible, so he could look gracious and noble as he “helped” me. He’d even try to trigger it, both so he could make me feel emotions for him, and to disrupt anything good I had going on. When I left, I was panicked that I wouldn’t be able to live without him, I think because of this.–And of course Mom did the same things, too, so she wouldn’t have to feel her own unacceptable emotions and so I wouldn’t be competent to live alone (living alone would mean I would have no family and therefore no support system, so in a way that part of it at least remotely makes sense). She’s horrifically terrified that people won’t like her, to the point of lashing out at people so they won’t like her, in preparation for the not-liking that they were apparently going to do anyway. I can sympathize but not endure.
At any rate, I’m doing reasonably fine living on my own (with Ray!), even if I do deeply question myself at times. I weathered the storm last night without pushing anyone away, wrecking relationships, breaking anything, or praying for the end of the world. So…an uncomfortable success.
Got up this morning feeling yucky but elated. More of the stuff in my hips let go, which was interesting. IYKYK. I still can’t get everything to work in harmony together, though, and my solar plexus, chest, neck, and head were all tight. With the hips working better, though, it’s now time to deal with finding the next level up for a few of the yoga poses. I can take chair pose all the way down to a full squat and back up again smoothly. Tree pose became much easier and I was able to dance while holding it, then take my foot and move it around; one side was better than the other but it was a big jump forward on either side. Pigeon pose was so much improved that I included the back bend in it this morning and mostly had my hips level. I still suck at plank, situps, wheel/bridge, and anything involving the splits. Warriors were about the same as a few days ago.
Walking: I did NOT go far today; my neck and back were too sore. I was able to coax Three-Pointer out. “Look. We made it.” He tried to trick me into saying it was all me who was having the emotions, not him (he’s very tricky), but eventually we agreed that we were just out for a walk together and not a fight. He’s not ready to let go of his aspects of anger. I’ll wait and keep walking with him until he figures out he already has, for the moment anyway. The other characters need him.
Midjourney: I tried once again to get the Goob with an eye mask on so he can match the other characters. NOPE. I gave it up when the anger started to spiral out of control. I planned to hire an artist to do cover art and character sketches anyway. At least I have a reasonably good reference image for the main characters now. I have a good Three-Pointer already, too. He’s not wearing a mask either, but I can’t see him putting up with it in the first place.
Having images of my characters that feel right is amazing.
I think what I heard in the office hours for Midjourney yesterday means that taking issues to them about the Asian stereotypes is more likely to be worth trying than not, so I’m going to work on that. Will report. There are plans for a big update to v4 soon, with multiprompts and images prompts. YAY! And color schemes some time after that.
I dug out my dragon necklace and earrings from the packed stuff. I’ll often wear them when I’m feeling bitey, and I suspect I’ll need them for the rest of the scene today. It’s a shock when someone you should be able to trust judges you; it’s maddening when someone you should be able to trust judges someone you care about. Even when you know the judgy person is only lashing out because they don’t want to deal with their own shit, and doesn’t actually judge you.
I can write about that sort of situation easily. What I need to figure out is how to write the scene so it’s helpful, not triggery, for readers. GAHHHH. Wish me luck.