Dreams be dreams

I’ve been spending a lot of time in reflection. A lot of time considering and reconsidering my perspective of the world, of people I know, of people I care about and the ties I've made and broken.

In the last week, in the midst of trying to find out what demisexuality really means, I found myself engaged in the strangest conversation. I discovered ties between a new friend and many old friends. People we've come across, who looks like what and who did what music thing and which persons might have been serial gropers. At the end of it? I felt the wind kicked out of me.

 

I felt like everything I knew, everything I make excuses for and file away just melt and show how afraid I am.

 

I realised I'd created these dream people. Images informed by my perspective - a sole and solidarity experience of someone because that's the way that it had happened. Almost always alone together and that had been the norm. So, everything together just showed the person I worry about every other day that they remain silent may not even exist.

I was angry, I felt betrayed and hurt. A hot-white fury fuelled by thoughts that I’d been lied to. I can’t stand lies. I don’t need to be lied to. It’s exhausting and hurtful. I’d rather be stung by truth than be strung along with lies. Even the possibility of lies threw off my whole worldview.

A worldview I’ve build thinking that I was doing right by caring for others. Being concerned about the silent types.

I know what the darkness feels like. I’ve isolated myself. But I tried coming out of my cocoon and being honest after spending a long time in silence. Turns out, hasn’t been all that great trying to live honestly.

More than 7 years ago I had a conversation with someone I no longer know. It was about fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of commitment and fear of love. This conversation took place in the flour and rice aisle in MHCC. I was in high school and I thought I’d figured everything out (as you do at almost 18).

His words egged me into something that still haunts me. Trusting in emotion. Letting life take you in a direction you can’t plan, predict. Pretending that I was steel as long as I professed my emotions and wore them on my sleeve.

It was something that just hurt the whole way through. People that cared for me encouraged change but I thought my mind was made up about everything because of what my heart said.

Ehhhhhhhh. In short? I’ve been an idiot.

Emotions are sensitive things or at least mine are. Easily bruised. Nerves bare. Spirals of self-doubt and self-loathing. Questioning and re-questioning after being conditioned to exist in… ‘the relationship zone’.

A few months ago, as I stared out the window of the work-car I let my mind wander. I wondered what it would be like to turn into a side road, go adventuring, wade out into the ocean and sit and meditate among the trees. It had been a long time since I felt the outside pull at me.

I’d lost myself in and in-between relationships.

I thought of my phases in life around the people I’ve liked. My emotional attachments have dictated the music I listen to, the art I’m drawn into, the clothes I feel comfortable in, the people I spend time with.

It’s disgusting really.

After 5 years in a stable relationship, something clicked.

I don’t know what it’s like to just get up and let your whims take you. After 7 years of anxiety, I don’t know what it’s like to walk barefoot through grass listening to the sounds of other living things without holding someone’s hand.

I’m not going to break up with my partner though. That would be weird.

I talked to him instead.

Things went well.

But I have been meditating more. Reflecting more. Reading cards.

I’m trying to remember the odd flower child I want to be. Breathing the dark thoughts away rather than indulging them. Breaking bad habits. It may take a while. I’ve only been twisting myself here and there for about a decade now.

My heart may be convincing but she's a little too sensitive to be the one in charge.

Wonder-onder-ondering

I have always wondered. No, not wandered - I’m more than happy not moving for 36 hours, slowly almost turning into a rock before being dragged off to do something like breathe, eat or get to work.

Wondering - I let my mind roam, curious about the world and the things, the people, the creatures around me. And I wonder how you are. Reader. Friend. Stranger. Are you okay?

I reached out to what seems like an old, old friend about a week ago - curious if he was okay. In and out of hospital waiting rooms, my mind would wander to ask how he was - a question I couldn’t really answer.

We aren’t friends on Facebook or anything else really. My e-stalking dug up nothing. He seemed too quiet or was really good at keeping life offline. Even a friend of his who I had been friends with online had dropped me off his list. Interesting but understandable (we weren’t friends, anyway and I’m fairly antisocial).

So, I just sent everything out - to whatever Skype, Facebook Messenger, Email contact I had I asked “Are you alive?” Turns out he was. Was I worried something had happened? I don’t know.

I was scared he hated me. That’s why I went looking. Why would he hate me? I don’t know. Why should I care? I don’t know. I worried. My mind wondered it once and I couldn’t un-stick the thought.

He answered one email. Then the next email. Then he stopped.

Why? I wonder. I don’t know. But I’m trying not to wonder too much. It hurts. I feel hurt. I shared something he probably didn’t care too much about.

If you’ve read The Gandalf Downstairs, you’d know I had a little polyp. Well, while my papsmear came back clear, the polyp results said I had HPV CIN1. What does that mean?

Well, if you believe the doctor who told me that I should definitely have children (because it’s so easy to decide these things and a stranger should pick for me), it means that in 6 months I either have nothing to worry about or early stage cervical cancer.

That scares me. To my core. It shakes me hard. I can’t even wonder about that. It’s my second ever wall. A block. A no-go zone.

1. My father.

2. The polyp.

The moment my mind starts to wonder, I start to cry. While I cry often - including at the drop of a hat, halfway through an ad about health insurance and at the sight of a yawning puppy - this is a different response. This is an automatic, turn-the-tap-on, slow crawl out of my eyes.

I'm trying to keep myself on the straight and narrow. I'm trying to keep healthy. I'm trying not to smoke. I'm not 100% doing okay and I don't know how to really express it because everytime my mind goes there - waterworks.

Stupid brain. I wish I could tell you what to do.

I wish I didn't wonder.