artifactsweshared

[artifactsweshared]

i think what is radical is the feeling of being held in some way

i think that is what religion does and it is interesting to me because it is in a way what we were trying to create with the cosmos, just some kind of container or space with an ethical justice lens

i think it is emotional to be held and then to be released back into your individual self. i think i feel the great loneliness of this transition (ie after sex) or after programming at this retreat or even in the small moments when i am just alone again after being in a group, the departure from single to group to single again is quite ... severe

it is true that most days i am just holding onto myself and it is painful and lonely and it is true that i seek some other kind of holding

i think i need to figure out with L how to really care for each other i can see he doesn't want problem solving but i also don't want that (i think when we are stressed) but sometimes i do just want to be held in the feeling. i think that is a real need. what is the difference between that and caregiving, what is the line? i think it's that i am still maintaining a kind of autonomy and self independence. i think he has to trust this can happen, i have to trust this can happen, too

but maybe having faith of some kind and this kind of community will present something different a relaxing of the dependence on the nuclear family or the romantic partner. i am still not fully built out in this but i think it is a good goal

[artifactsweshared]

JESSE Yes, I heard you - that you don't love me anymore. I figured you didn't mean it but if you did, then fuck it. You know something? You're just like the little girls and everybody else - you want to live in some fairy tale. I'm just trying to make things better here. I tell you I love you unconditionally, I tell you that you're beautiful, I tell you that your ass looks great when you're 80. I'm trying to make you laugh. I put up with plenty of your shit, and if you think I'm just some dog who's gonna keep coming back then, you're wrong. But if you want true love - this is it. (MORE) 113. JESSE (CONT'D) This is real life. It's not perfect, but it's real. And if you can't see it, then you're blind, alright? I give up.

[artifactsweshared]

i think i am just trying to accept that i still mourn pete and whatever stability he promised and i am still unsure if i made the right decision and sometimes that makes me unhappy and panic. i am trying to accept that i am not sure about L and that makes me panic. that i am trying to figure out too many things at once that when he isunhappy with me i take it as a sign i should run, rather than accept that sometimes people will be in conflict. i don't know if our different styles means we should not be together. i don't know any of these things and i panic.

[artifactsweshared]

Do I ever ask you about the time you went to go visit your old boyfriend after his mother died? No. You want to know why? Because I KNOW the way that your fucking French ass works, and I guarantee that you at least blew that guy, but I also know that you love me, okay? I'm okay with you being a complicated human being! I don't wanna live a boring life where two people own each other, where two people are institutionalized in a box that others created - because that is a bunch of stifling bullshit.

[artifactsweshared]

I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.

[artifactsweshared]

perhaps my feelings are like a great tidal rush always running out of control into something difficult and unrelenting that is how they feel in my body and sometimes they are lying to me sometimes everything is okay but i am in the great tidal wave and i feel i must react

"When I view his moods through the lens of my own anxieties, they can warp reality, causing me to perceive antagonism where there is simply neutrality or low energy."

the lens of my anxieties. this lens that has sometimes been right and perhaps been wrong. was i wrong about Pete? i don't know that i was anxious, just tired annoyed frustrated disconnected. could we have saved it? yes for sure. did I/ could i/ at the time? no. i think we are both where we are meant to be, even if it means i am unmarried and without a child. would he have even been ready for those things, had we stayed together? there is no guarantee

but of course it will never not be painful, all the imagined lives i could have lived. it will never not be painful, the great and ongoing stretch of loneliness. would we have been happy in this state, where we both had money, and could travel, and see the world. you did travel together and you weren't happy would money have saved it?

you can think about these things over and over turn them over and over again in your head but in the end i cannot change the past. and there is no future. the present moment is the choice i made. sometimes i think about the past years and wonder if we had stayed together maybe none of the health stuff would ever have happened but the health stuff was already happening and it did happen even when we were together. whatever anxiety i had then was still there. so there is no point in arguing endlessly with myself.

my anxieties tell me this relationship with L also isn't right and that i should run away. but i am contributing to the anxieties, with my own anxiety. it is true that i could depend on pete for more things but also not all the things. i hope L and R get married, they seem really good together and i feel hopeful. but of course what do i know i don't watch them and have no idea what their actual relationship is.

i want so much to lean totally on another person to alleviate my anxieties to relinquish control but when did he hold me? when did he sit with me and listen to me? he made food and he drove the car. like J and K I wonder if some of it is just beyond someone's capacity. L drives a car but does not make food or really do any domestic tasks. I want this picture of stability but I date all these people who are completely unready to settle down. I want to get married and send P the invite and say look I did it without you motherfucker because I am spiteful and angry.

we will never have a chance to really break down that relationship i will never get closure i will never hear him tell me he is sorry. there is no conversation and i have only ever wanted conversation. i will need to get over it. the extent to which i am still stuck here i think keeps me from really moving on and feeling hopeful about anyone else and it's not fair to them or me.

i have no idea if things with L will work or not. i genuinely do not. i think if i keep running away and threatening to break up well certainly they will not.

"It may be easier to see yourself as unimpeachable, waiting for someone decent enough to come along, but it’s far more liberating to locate your own agency in all of this, and learn to wield it."

what is my agency in all of it. to stay when i feel like running. to cry and let the emotion run through me when i feel like i've fucked up. did i ever feel like that with pete? i don't know. i think pete never told me if he was unhappy with what i was doing and instead he just slowly over time shut down his love. or at least, that is what i perceived, i don't think he realized it until i told him he had turned away. it is true if i don't text back right away and wait until the next morning the emotion subsides. this is regardless of the situation something i can get better at. i am always in that great tidal rush i would like to be

out

[artifactsweshared]

perhaps i am feeling too many things to write today and that is okay

perhaps there is no coming back together after you have decided you are too far apart

i am feeling quite cynical having read P's stupid poetry.

[artifactsweshared]

i have tried so hard to be understood by the people i date and it is crushing every time to feel so far apart from it. i think i felt this with pete, i think i felt this with phil, i felt this with brian. i think just the frustration of fundamentally different value systems. i think i just haven't found what i am looking for. it is painful to be misunderstood. i do not know how many times i can cross over looking for you

[artifactsweshared]

i am still quite sad about all of it. the disconnection. i am upset that my bose headphones won't connect to my computer and that i left my cord at home. i suppose i just feel all the parts of myself that have been left behind. i don't really want to read tonight.

i feel anxious about leaving my job and having to deal with all the bullshit, people's feelings and expectations. i feel like it was the right decision to leave but i am carrying some anxiety about it. i suppose that i will get in trouble (like the times before). i suppose it is never easy, leaving something. i am anxious about the air smelling like wildfire. i am anxious about what i am breathing in. i am anxious that i am too quiet here, but i cannot bring myself to be any more talkative.

i am anxious about lev and i's constant disconnection. it feels like it is not right. and all the buddhism goes out the door. i cannot tell if the disconnection is real or if i am just impatient, petulant, terrified. i am struggling again with the things i cannot control.

i am nervous about the state of the world i am nervous about the state of myself in the world.

[artifactsweshared]

self-fulfilling

you are creating me to be what has hurt you before, you are setting me up to be the bad guy, as if i will hurt you and criticize you and demand of you like the finances with the babies or the obsession and paranoia with the health anxiety. i think you are rightly afraid of those things but if you believe that is what is happening i will be constantly set up against your defensive posture

i do not want to do those things. certainly some of my behaviors may trigger you and make you fear but i need some hope some belief that this can be different i am trying to make this different and you may have to trust me but without that window that sliver of difference i will be hurt, trying to bat away your defenses, as i cower in front of them and you will only see me as the society and the people who have hurt you before

[artifactsweshared]

i have been waiting for forgiveness from you. that you will finally say to me, i wanted to hurt you the way you hurt me. and i am sorry. and can you forgive me. because i was hurt and i didn't know how to say that. i thought you might still love me even, can you believe that?

at many junctures it would have been easier for them to split but love is continuing to go towards each other

this is what i learn from couples therapy. we never went but i pretend it is you and me on the couch, i pretend we tried to see each other, i pretend we got to a depth of understanding that would have kept me in our covid-deal apartment with our covid-era dog. i came back to you six months later in that restaurant that looked like a converted train station and i said, let's try. i don't remember what happened after that, not really, but i think it was me, or you, who didn't want to. i remember you driving me home through downtown brooklyn a few months later. the light was garish and we were stuffed in your car in our winter coats. you told me you bought this girl a $2000 coat. my first reaction is we'd never spent $2000 on each other like that but i was lying, of course you had. of course you took care of me. i didn't want to see that then, because i'd have to admit, i still wanted you to, a little, at least.

there are many hurts you continued to apply in my life, after. i am sure i did the same to you. we did not move back towards each other after all. and that is how i knew, in the end, we didn't love each other anymore.

i can recall our love so easily. even now, three years later. sometimes i forget how long it has been. i talk about us as if it something long past, but the truth is i think about you often. i am filled with self-loathing when this happens. my sister reminds me that i did not like you, i found you repulsive, and it is hard for me to remind myself, you should marry someone you like, because i loved you, for so long.

[artifactsweshared]

in the summer the weaknesses of my $3200 studio apartment make themselves known. they have been in hiding in other seasons, much like myself. in the heat i am exposed and uncomfortable and so are my thoughts.

i do not think it is some error of mine, who i choose to date, who i choose to love. but i am clearly making some kind of error, again. i do not want to be treated this way, dismissed and reduced, but somehow, it happens. i wonder if i have a paranoia, which i euphemize as a sensitivity because i would like to be gentler to myself.

i think my natural inclination, and always, my inclination when i am stressed, or overwhelmed, or uncomfortable, or made to sit in the space of my own bad doings, is to leave. and i think this is largely the behavior of the general population. i cannot be friends with my ex's friends because this would be uncomfortable for all parties. interest, liking, affinity are discarded. this has hurt me very much.

i am uncomfortable with L for many reasons. i do not really understand the experience of being trans, or lesbian, and this is both a distancing and discomfort. i listen. but i know it is not enough. the eras of pain and dysmorphia still reside within him. I am not sure fucking me with a prosthetic dick will resolve this. but i think he believes it may, and i am sure on some level, it helps. he is trying to be a man and in doing so adopting behaviors that i find unseemly in men.

if i turn on my half broken air conditioner, will it be better than leaving my window open with my portable air conditioner that does not really fit in the window crack but i force it anyway, a rigged up contraption that fails to keep out the heat wave?

i cannot imagine living in one hundred years. can you? it would be a great tragedy, not going outside for a season.

I believe L's hardness comes from pain. i believe he is hurt inside from many tragedies and maladies that came long before me. but these are things that limit a love. and i question if a love is possible, if he wants a love to be possible between us. this is a topic of general avoidance. i am sure it is stressful, overwhelming, uncomfortable. the topic is discarded. but i know where it lies on the floor, under a dirty sock and half-eaten dog treats.

it is unfortunate that this is the topic i am most interested in. i am always interested in whether love is possible. it is, to me, the only question that really matters. i do think i can will it into existence. if i believe in love then i love. i am hesitant to love. i am hesitant of a future. it is not really the question of children, though i have portrayed it to be, it is a question of whether he can love me as i am and whether i can love him as he is. people do not change, my therapist reminds me. i listen to him speak to me and my body curls into itself, trying to protect me from this truth. i try to talk to him. i think we reach a mutual understanding. for a moment we are exposed and sweaty and it is bearable. but tomorrow the temperatures rise.

[artifactsweshared]

i wonder how much of trying has to do with fundamental attraction to the other person. i wonder if i'll ever be attracted to someone stable to someone who has it in control who plans the day who somehow feels patriarchal despite it being well intentioned i think it is true

that i don't like being controlled i don't like being told what to do (even if it is well intentioned)

i maybe choose beta men bc i don't like the feeling of being told what to do i don't need the stability they offer, actually, i am capable of making my own decisions, actually

[artifactsweshared]

it was an impossibility, balancing two connections, each so different. i suppose it is just a matter of tolerance and i surprise myself at what exactly it is. that i can take of you. maybe it is true i cannot take certain kinds of trauma certain kinds of anxiety certain manifestations of not dealing with your shit but maybe i can take L being trans and not having a job or income i don't know what comes up for me isn't fear or frustration but tenderness and care. i don't know. i can't find that empathy for these men who just can't deal with their shit. i don't think this makes me a bad person just a person with certain (set) limitations now that i am (34) and have less tolerance, more lessons learned. i just dated two men who didn't love themselves and externalized that onto the relationship. i think it's valid to not want that again. not that there was a lack of love but fundamentally i couldn't fit it in. its just where you are in the relating to it. that could be not work. the reality btwn words the space btwn words and truths of how you'll act

[artifactsweshared]

if i think about it too much of course we do not make sense

withered instability the dream of an artist these are dreams i've dreamed before

[artifactsweshared]

after everything i could still be happy

after everything i could still feel the lightness and presence of a new connection after every failed attempt i could still believe

i must still believe

[artifactsweshared]

when i look back on us i'm sure we'll have existed only in the hours between eleven and three, some kind of ef·fer·ves·cent twilight

to see you in the light would expose me to some kind of truth

that i have long safeguarded that i

might be non-normative and that i would like to be loved as such

is everyone we love just a projection of the current state of us

and if so how does it sustain

i keep thinking about our sustainability i keep watching the clock run out

i like the way you pull my head into your lips i like the way our back and chest fit two lazy countours and you whispered this feels right even when

we didnt know of course how could you know the game of life is one uncertainty after another in buddhism i study impermanence in love i

want to see you again and again and again even now already knowing the end