I haven't updated in nearly two months. I wish I could say it was due to amazing circumstances.
True to form, the last big obstacle left for me to change this year was my job, and about a month after my last post I was laid off. At least, they did it for me this time. I don't mind really, it's an inconvenience, but I have unemployment and a number of good options in case things fall through.
It has also given me plenty of time to do some things I hadn't been able to before. I've taken up a daily yoga practice, which seems to have some nice effects so far. More importantly though I've been drafting out a comic that rehashes some of the themes/events of my previous relationship (not the most recent, but the prior one that I've often labeled emotionally abusive). In drafting all of that out, it brought back a lot of memories. Mostly unpleasing in their vividness. Not in that the memories themselves are bad. I find them enjoyable and at times erotic, but a large part of me hates that. After all the bullshit I went through, there's no reason I should long for those memories. Enjoy them, think about them, sure, but not long for them.
I had an opportunity to re-read some of our old messages from three and a half years ago, it was...upsetting. The verbiage and wording made me incredibly anxious and unnerved. I couldn't tell if I wanted to cry or throw up. Hell I still can't tell.
My hope was that in writing the comic/story of that, it would help excise it from me, much in the way writing here helps pull the emotions out of me. So far that's yet to be seen, though there is a nice sense of fulfillment, along side the uncomfortable turned on/near tears emotions that haunt me at coffee shops while I write.
I'm not sure if I simply underestimated, or forgot, just how much that whole event fucked with my head.
I feel more and more isolated, purposefully. I find myself cutting connections (or wanting to) from people I don't feel I have a thriving relationship with anymore. I can't tell if I feel closed off from people out of a need to issue reaffirmation tests, or if I honestly don't value that relationship anymore. In reality it's likely a combination of the two.
These are not new warning signs, the isolation and depression, the withdrawal, they're all pretty familiar things that I've learned to watch out for. I mean, well, let me put it this way. I can remember doing this same thing, typing into the soft glow of a computer, to music, while I deal with depression and tears, fifteen years ago. The fact that I feel like so little has changed doesn't bode well.
Instances likes these make me wonder how anyone gets through life alive. I can look at some folks, who seem to have their shit figured out, and they don't seem to have any fundamental advantage over me (at least not anymore). Yet they seem to consistently get the best possible dice rolls. You'd expect eventually the numbers would play out and something would come my way, yet it never seems to work out that way. Hell even my good rolls apparently end up fucked in the end.
With the return of the old baggage comes the old devils. While they've yet to manifest, I can smell their chummed waters already. And as with any addiction, it's not if, but when.
