Traveling Light
Travel today. Shorter than my Ohio trips and so easier to tolerate. Still a thing that makes me want to be disengaged to avoid stress. It mostly works but it’s fragile and it depends on me be willing to accomplish anything (sometimes not even media consumption). And it eats a good deal my weekend, which I’m not excited about. But I made it without major incident. My only significant delay was on the train at my destination, waiting in the tunnel due to a “police action” at one of the stations. And so now I’m here [fig 1], for a little under 24 hours.
Tomorrow will be tough. 8 hours of meetings and then another flight. In public all day. No access to any private space until I get home. Trains and planes a d lots of walking. Carrying all my stuff. On the one hand it’s a thing I have lots of experience with, that I know I can survive even when things are real bad. On the other it makes it easy for me to get stuck in old feels, to trigger emotional flashbacks, and to be super detached. My smart brain knows that I’ll likely be home by midnight, and that my wife and dog are waiting there for me. But I will have to work to keep my feels from being homeless and alone in spite of the knowledge. And I won’t have the sort of things that make it easier to recover if I have trouble, like someplace quiet and private, or time to take care of myself.
So I’ll have to do what I can to stay both physically well enough – water and rest and tension management – and in a good head space. I don’t want to be feeling sick and exhausted before I even go to the airport. I don’t want to be feeling like I should flee the county as I wander alone with the only bag I need to travel. I wonder if taking a piece of luggage would help keep me tethered to the present, and to my life. It’s nice to not carry anything but it puts me real close to that old feeling of just abandoning everything. Particularly if I’m already tolerating some detachment to deal with travel.
I did walk by this today, on the way to the hotel [fig 2,3]. I like how it’s heavier at the bottom, and less regularly shaped. How the top is more detailed but falls into planes and polygons instead of the 3D shapes below. I like how the carving grain is parallel lines across each facet except where it’s curves to give us a body in an otherwise roughly shaped block. And like all 4-year-olds I like that it uses all the colors. I don’t have any great insight about it but it made me happy at the end of a long day.
Talked to M today, about isolation. About the way the world not only inflicts trauma but then expects its victims to accommodate the reactions of other people to the way that trauma shapes our lives. The way society not only doesn’t protect us, but asks us to protect other people from even knowing about the pain. Punishes us for sharing it or responding to it. Forces a choice between being isolated through rejection of those parts of us other people find difficult to know, or by hiding those parts of ourselves, or withdrawing altogether, to avoid the pain of that rejection. Between that and Friday’s attack it’s a weekend full of abandonment and stress. I hope the coming week edges toward better.
Talked to Cowboy about the fallacy of the static self and the value of symmetry in relationships. The challenge of identity in the context of willful change. The narrow motivation of obligation and the challenge of conflating social acceptance with success. About the fear of being misunderstood by people claiming to help, and the perceived protection of distance even when seperation is the danger. We don’t often speak like this and I suspect it was hard o you, but I appreciate you doing it.
Talked to CookieZ. Or rather, promoted them to reply and got one bit of sharing in a wall of exclamation points. It’s so much I want to read it as distress, though I know that’s not their intent. It feels to me like there’s a lot of alone on the other end of that punctuation, but it’s hard to see exactly what kind. And all Shanda reads is her own fear of the potential harms of religion, so she’s not much help in sorting it out. I’m happy enough with how the interactions are going, but I’m not yet sure if there’s a path from here to real communication. It’s a little tough for me to not feel like I’m being sold at. But they’ve engaged on the concept of mutual serivce, so maybe that’s will become something broader. Even if it doesn’t I’m a big fan of utility, and we should at least be able to accomplish some of that.
Didn’t talk to DerbyK, despite our attempts to plan such a thing. We still should, once I’m back.
I got just my thumbs painted before leaving today; I sort of meant to do my fingers on Saturday but the day got away from me once Shanda showed up. Travel is pretty hard on my hands anyway, so just thumbs is probably fine. And I had time to grab coordinated earrings and suspenders and whatnot, which is still a little complicated for me. Travel makes me really value the versatility and durablility and AC of my clothes and so it’s hard for me to want to care about choosing colors. It can already be hard for me to remember to choose such things when I’m at home, let alone when I’m out and about. But I made it a point today. I even brought a face pencil. I figure some caring about my appearance instead of just my technical suitability for public existence might help keep me from floating away while I’m at risk. Might help keep me from feeling like my whole life is in that one bag and that staying here or fleeing are as good as going home.
Watched some more of Search for Grog before I left. We’re at the call for initiative in the main battle sequence. Which looks to be about 2 hours long. I think Shanda and I are both excited to do some CritRole again, though it wouldn’t be easy to come up with enough time to watch it in a lot of weeks. We could probably find some compromise if we were interested in making it go. It’s one of the ways I got you to pay attention to feelings without being so threatened – now that you’ve leveled up that skill we might have a while different experience. If you can stop deciding that hating Liam is more important than having a life you like.
I feel unsettled about the day, and about my attempts to pull it together here. I know the structure of it and my detachment during the travel montage make that worse. Probably my anxiety about tomorrow too. But it still feels like I’m missing something important. It’s not worth waiting up to figure out though – it would be better to be rested tomorrow and surprised by a feel than to be marginally more prepared for a feel but too tired to deal with it. And it might be nothing.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
