12/21/2022
Today the usual routines, habits, etc. aren't fitting like they usually do. Today I'm not happy with how I've been living my every day - always on TikTok, never going out, always terrified that something bad will happen. I retreat into my brain, going over the same shit over and over.
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I wrote that yesterday. Instead of spending hours and hours on TikTok, I played WoW, I talked to Kelsey over the phone, I got some work done, and then I went to sleep early. My body was exhausted. I was exhausted. The NYC trip was incredible, amazing, exactly what I needed, and it was also really tiring. Traveling in NYC is very overstimulating. The subway stations and the traffic, especially, but there's so much going on all the time, everywhere. By the time I got into bed last night, I was done.
That's not even mentioning the guy who hit me either! Right at the end of the trip, 30 minutes from Kelsey's apartment, a guy trying to merge hit my side and even though it was fine - we're fine, he was fine, the car was fine, the cop was super chill and I don't even think I'm going to file the accident claim, it was still a lot. I freaked out and the first thing I did was beg Kelsey to tell me if I had done something wrong. It was like I was a kid again, terrified that I was going to get hurt.
By the time I woke up yesterday morning, my body was screaming for rest. So that's what I did yesterday. I played WoW, which is my way of resting without sleep, and I literally slept. I'm still not feeling 100% rested, but something about this weekend changed a little piece of me. I've felt calmer yesterday and today than I have in a long time. The obsessive thoughts about Javi and my relationship seem like distant ships, passing in the night. The worries about not being enough, about not doing enough, also feel like ghosts in old houses, collecting dust instead of wrecking havoc poltergeist-style.
I've been writing about ghosts and cemeteries frequently this year, especially in the past few months. I was thinking about that on the drive down from NYC - the theme of loss down my maternal line. Literal death strung through for my mom and my grandma, the loss of my kid uncle permeating everything in their lives, a trauma so big, so magnificent, that it hangs around more than 40 years later like a dense, invisible fog that they refuse to actually acknowledge. It's been punctuated by the death of my other uncle, Freddy, another trauma so big for my grandmother that it, too, permeates everything.
My Loss is different - ghosts of those I've loved that continue with their lives without me. Relationships that once meant everything that have ended, moved on, abandoned me. (They haven't, but my brain says they have.) The last stage of grief is acceptance. I stare at it as if through a cloak, a veil, a wall of fog, understanding it's there but unable to fully arrive at it for longer than a few minutes. I guess, right now, I don't want to run away from any of this, or distract myself with trauma talk or astrology talk, or any of my usual coping mechanisms that let me coast away from the feeling of loss.
Yesterday I read a quote that said that every birthday is the world celebrating how long it's known you for. The wheel of fortune card talks about the cyclical nature of life. My notes say: find your center point and go with the flow. My notes say: when we're in the flow of life, we are aligned with the energies turning the wheel of time and the cycles of life.
My notes say: wear the world like a loose garment.
Today I will.
Happy winter solstice.