March/April Book List

Books read:

~N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy 2: The Broken Kingdoms (411 pgs) [I enjoyed this book, but not as much as the first or third book.]

~N. K. Jemisin, The Inheritance Trilogy 3: The Kingdom of Gods (613 pgs) [I loved this one!!! It helps that I adore the character of Sieh.]

~Baron D'Holbach, We Are Completely Determined [This is an essay in a book of philosophy essays. It's from one of many philosophy classes I audited in college because I was maxed out on credits but it was  a stress release for me to attend the lectures and do the readings til I got kicked out by the head of the department who happened to be teaching the class that went with this book. Which, I understand his point about department funding being dependent on numbers of students, but also I wasn't disruptive and it was petty dictator behavior to tell me I was his favorite student for the debates and questions I asked so he would welcome me taking the courses for credit but that he would call campus security if he caught me ever again auditing classes I wasn't in within his department. he was a pompous ass and that was a whole ordeal and a half because he was full of himself as king within his own small pond and the way he explained why the funding for the department mattered more to him than the knowledge seeking learning and questioning really put me off academia for academia's sake. But that's another story and it doesn't stop me reading and thinking about things, it just made me dislike him and philosophy grad students/professors made in his authoritarian red tape mold. Before I was kicked out by him, I read the assigned essays at the time, but not all of the book. So I recently pulled it and have been intermittently reading a given subject chapter of the essays in the unread sections between other nonfiction books, novels, and series. This time it was the section of free will v. determinism. I will put the title of the book and page count up whenever I finish it cover to cover, but no idea when that will be. Until then, I'll just put the essay titles/selections with no page count whenever I read through a section of it.]

~William James, The Dilemma of Determinism

~Corliss Lamont, Freedom of the Will and Human Responsibility

~Michael Poore, Reincarnation Blues (374 pgs) [I enjoyed this and it worked well as a purse book because the style of it was short section breaks that were episodic easy to set aside.]

~W. T. Stace, Compatibilism

~Harry Frankfurt, Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person

~Richard Taylor, Fate

~Edited by Dudley Randall, The Black Poets (349 pgs)

~Barth Anderson, The Magician and the Fool (290 pgs) [I had great hopes for this when I found it in a little library and read the back, so it jumped the queue for purse books. Sadly, it was nowhere near as good as I had hoped.... it didn't hold together or even make sense within its own created world.  Luckily it was free and a quick read...so I can't say it wasn't worth the money/time invested in it, just that it wasn't as good as the description led me to hope.]

~Ken Libbrecht, Guide to Snowflakes (112 pgs)

~Hal Zina Bennett, Zuni Fetishes (173 pgs)

~Deborah Hautzig, Happy Birthday, Little Witch [kids book, so page count immaterial]

~adapted by Freya Littledale from the story by Washington Irving, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow [also a kids book]

~Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (390 pgs) [I loved this book! I don't know that it's good science, it's more memoirs than anything else, but it's a holistic way to relate to the gift giving aspect of the natural world.] 

~Lisa Halliday, Asymmetry (271 pgs) [this was recommended to me by the owner of Arcadia Books several summers ago as one that he had recently read and very much enjoyed. It seemed like a good palette cleanse after my disappointment with The Magician and The Fool because I had no real expectations of it other than I had been told was lyrical and surprisingly beautiful and that it would be VERY fast paced modern style. I didn't really feel a so what to the first section or the third, the second left you hanging without resolution, and the three parts didn't seem to fit together to me. It was fine and had moments but nothing world changing or special.]

~Neal Shusterman, The Skinjacker Trilogy 1: Everlost (313 pgs) [Loved these! This trilogy was a delight! Ridiculous in the way kids literature can be, but an absolute delight! Would recommend to any kid who loves Roald Dahl and can handle some spookiness]

~Neal Shusterman, The Skinjacker Trilogy 2: Everwild (424 pgs)

~T. S. Eliot, The Wasteland

~Neal Shusterman, The Skinjacker Trilogy 3: Everfound (500 pgs)

~James Bowen, A Street Cat Named Bob (310 pgs) [I picked this and the sequel up from a local little library a while back and was going to bring them with me for my last visit to Seattle area as wholesome enjoyable light reading then last minute decided against it because my sister's family's cat who died about four or five years ago was a light orange siamese point named Bob. I picked it back up when I was poll working the primary and overthinking "what would be a non-political book I could read between voters?"  It's not exactly non-political as the human narrator telling his story is a recovering drug addict previously unhoused individual who talks about trying to claw your way up from the rock bottom and how this random street cat showing up on his door choosing him turned his life around. But it had a cat on the cover and seemed innocuous and a lot of my fellow pollworkers took a picture of it to look it up after asking me about it. I enjoyed these very much, but they were quick light easy writing not too dense.]

~Laurence Housman retelling with illustrations by Edmund Dulac, Arabian Nights (133 pgs)

~Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha (434 pgs)

~Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose (262 pgs) [It was entirely the wrong season for this book, this is a January/February book, but it was so good! It suited my restless fey energy where I felt like I needed to be somewhere but I didn't know where on the day I picked it up to read.]

~Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nuova (105 pgs) [this is a dual language copy of the text; because my Italian is passable for reading with about 85-95% comprehension, though my Italian is a right joke with the THICKEST French accent imaginable if I try to speak la bella lingua.]

~James Bowen, The World According to Bob (286 pgs)

~Jean-Paul Sartre, Les mots (212 pgs) 

 Books acquired:

~Tomi Adeyami, Children of Blood and Bone

~Tomi Adeyami, Children of Virtue and Vengeance

~Barth Anderson, The Magician and The Fool

~Alex Aster, Lightlark

~T. A. Barron, The Great Tree of Avalon 2: Shadows on the Stars 

~Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Chosen

~Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Justice

~Roshani Chokshi, The Gilded Wolves

~Roshani Chokshi, The Silvered Serpents

~Roshani Chokshi, The Bronzed Beasts

~Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

~Cassandra Clare, Chain of Thorns

~Kate DiCamillo, The Beatrice Prophecy

~Hafsah Faizal, We Free the Stars

~Namina Forna, The Merciless Ones

~Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors

~Stephanie Garber, The Ballad of Never After

~Rachel Gillig, One Dark Window

~Rachel Gillig, Two Twisted Crowns

~Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, The Witch and the Tsar

~Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind

~C. N. Jackson, Time Tourist Outfitters, Ltd

~Dan Sasuweh Jones, Living Ghosts & Mischievous Monsters: Chilling American Indian Stories

~R. F. Kuang, Babel: An Arcane History

~LaCruz, Gabriela Romero, The Sun and the Void 

~Bartolomé de Las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

~Lang Leav, Others Were Emeralds

~Lang Leav, Self-Love for Small-Town Girls

~Morgan Llewellyn, Isles of the Blest

~Brenda Lozano, Witches

~Joseph Luzzi, Botticelli's Secret

~Winnie Lyon, The Curse of the King

~Melissa Marr, Remedial Magic

~Travis Novitsky & Annette S. Lee, Spirits Dancing: The Nights Sky, Indigenous Knowledge, & Living Connections to the Cosmos

~Jeneane O'Riley, How Does It Feel?

~Courtney Peppernell, Time Will Tell

~Kevin Reeves, The Composers: A Hystery of Music

~Ava Reid, Juniper & Thorn

~Rebecca Ross, A River Enchanted

~Rebecca Ross, A Fire Endless

~Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, The Storyteller of Marrakesh

~V. E. Schwab, Tunnel of Bones

~Larissa Joliet Taylor, The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc

~Angie Thomas, Concrete Rose

~Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

~Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

~Bill Water son & John Kascht, The Mysteries

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 1: 11 -- Finding Truth 12 -- Loose Ends

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 2: 5-- New Beginnings 6 -- More Crystals

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 2: 7 -- The World Changes 8 -- Romance Blossoms

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 2: 9 -- New (Ad)Ventures 10 -- (Ad)Ventures Continue

~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 2: 11 -- Designing the Future 12 -- The Future Beckons

 ~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 1-- The Next Generations 2 -- Into the Future

 ~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 3 -- The Fourth Generation 4 -- Starlight

 ~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 5 -- Exploring Starlight 6 -- The Planet of Starlight

 ~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 7 -- The Saga of Planet X...and Beyond 8-- What's Next

 ~D. E. Weingand, Crystal Saga Series 3: 9 -- Dealing with Darkness 10 -- Expansion into Space

~Peter S. Wells, The Battle That Stopped Rome

~Diane Wilson, The Seed Keeper

 ~Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

~Rebecca Yarros, Iron Flame

 

Last night after I got into all that over thinking "but I don't actually see how to work around this and I can't make it go away and if we just pretend it isn't there it still affects lots of other things" all I got all night down the bond was just really intense love and this sense of... "But that's not going to happen this time. This time is different. I'm not distracted, I'm very focused. And we've both learned why that doesn't work for us. It'll be alright this time. You'll see. Trust me." And curiously, I went to sleep with just that sense of trust and that everything would be alright somehow. And that sense of peace and being held in love and trust that actually this time won't be that same pattern playing out again. Which I wasn't expecting but made me quite happy. I bring it up because my third eye just exploded wide open with that same set of emotions down the bond all over again. And it was so incredibly strong all last night and this morning, especially from like midnight on and again at like 7am til 10am

And. Maybe there is a way through it that I haven't seen (yet) because everyone has some blinders on their subjective views, we all do. And so maybe I should just give it a wait and give it a chance and not be so quick to wash my hands walk away because I can't see a way to work around it. Maybe I'm just all in my head overthinking self-sabotaging what I want by telling myself I don't see how it works. Maybe I should just calm down a bit and relax and trust and wait. (I'm not very good at patience though better than some, best I can do is get adhd distracted so time disappears rather than fixating on the waiting clock watching, lol.)

Because, honestly, from my perspective, the only blocks that I see between us are the ones his sister created in October 2018 and the fear that he might want "not me" rather than me. That's it as far as I'm concerned. It's a short list. And maybe it's not such an insurmountable list as it seems to me. Maybe I'm just too close to it and so I can't see how easy the way around these seeming blocks actually is.  And maybe me thinking it a block is the only thing that makes it a block -- sometimes people are messy. But his sisters choices and actions shouldn't be paid for by the paths they block him from reaching... and that's what I'm doing when I say that the block is insurmountable and I ought to remove myself from his options for his sake. And that's not right to ask him to pay for her choices and her actions, y'know?

I actually don't have anything else to share right now except my March/April book list, and I'll do that as a separate post. I'm mostly just feeling a bit quiet inside and outside.  Mildly annoyed that I ran out of protective spray for my new shoes now that today is FINALLY neither rainy nor super windy and still have one more pair to spray and with the more rains coming up I wanted to get all the spraying done today. Not seriously annoyed, just that "I wanted to get this off my mental to do list load so I can wear them once the weather finishes turning." Ah well, I guess I'll just have to pickup some more all weather spray  before that happens. Not the end of the world, just a mild irritation. As for the rest of the week, after tonight I'll be Tomorrow late afternoon, my da and Uncle Jeff are coming over to switch the hinges on my new fridge so it opens the opposite way. And then Thurs I have my dentist cleaning. Friday Crissy is planning to come over for drinks and then I'm going to head over to my parents house for dinner and for my mum and I to finish catching up on figure skating. (Probably finishing it, I think. Don't actually know how much we still have from worlds. On verra.)  Saturday is dinner and the last symphony date of the season. Then Sunday afternoon is the memorial for Brian Mosley and I'll be the one transporting my grandma who wants to go.

I was sitting at like 27.5 hours in last night because I came in over the weekend and was thinking I might go watch figure skating with my maman tonight but she wanted to watch the Bucks game so we said Friday. I will have to do the end of month deposit tomorrow night anyway and I'll have to come back for the doggo after my Thursday dentist appointment. Not entirely certain how/why I managed this, but I'm already over 30 hours in of work with the time I've been in office this evening so we'll see about how the rest of the week plays out if I don't actually need to get hours in. Maybe Thurs night I'll just head home if I end up getting more than enough hours in tomorrow night. Or maybe I'll had home early tonight and go home to curl up and read... On verra

Anyway. That was it. Just wanted to be honest about that reaction down the bond and how it affected me and calmed me down off that overthinking ledge in the last post. I don't actually have much at all other than that right now. Just normal quotidian daily living things, nothing super interesting. And the book list has all the books I've finished and bought over the last couple months. But that's a separate post because it felt weird to tack this onto the start of that one, lol

Happy Beltane Eve and halfway to Halloween!!! I wore my Goosebumps haunted house tee because halfway to Halloween, lol. But with bright flower colored tie dye cardigan because Beltane Eve.

When the morning comes, When we see what we've become, In the cold light of day we're a flame in the wind, Not the fire that we've begun. Every argument, every word we can't take back. 'Cause with all that has happened, I think that we both know the way that this story ends. Then only for a minute, I want to change my mind. 'Cause this just don't feel right to me. I wanna raise your spirits. I want to see you smile, but, Know that means I'll have to leave. Know that means I'll have to leave. Lately, I've been, I've been thinking, I want you to be happier, I want you to be happier.

 Look, I don't have any way to sugar coat this and it hasn't changed no matter how much time has passed and it doesn't heal in the silence of burying it pretending it didn't happen -- it just scars over crooked like a broken bone that never got reset. You can have all the optimism in the world, but if you don't deal with the root cause and set the broken bones properly  (even if it means surgically rebreaking it) you won't remove the pain caused by the crookedness of pretending it wasn't broken and there won't be a way to heal from the past choices and how they reverberate to affect the present and the future.  I recognize there's nothing my choices can do to reset this old break other than to choose to respect the bond and try to behave as if what's on the other side of the boundary does not exist -- but I also recognize it's fucking shattered toxic as a result of the girls choices and the dynamic is healing awry in ways that cause pain render things unuseable and the longer it isn't faced or dealt with the harder it will get as it ossifies to ever reset it make it useable or not a source of pain. 

I am generally a person who is far more interested in figuring out how to make things better for the future than playing the blame game about who did what that got us here, but in this very particular case, there is no path to healing without other people acknowledging, taking responsibility, and accountability for their choices and what those choices created. And if that sounds like blame, I'm sorry. But I don't see how to heal things and set the broken pieces PROPERLY to heal without acknowledging how we got here and who chose to do what in the past and how they are or are not willing to change their choices moving forward -- as long as they are defensively ghosting anything to do with their past choices and the repercussions of them, there is no way to heal what was broken by those choices. Like, you can't set a shattered femur if you refuse to acknowledge that when the horse spooked and kicked it they shattered the bone. Denying the horse kicked and as a result the bone got shattered won't get you to any sort of future where the damn bone gets set properly so it can heal. Now you can say the horse kicked BECAUSE it spooked and then figure out how to keep it from spooking in the future and that's certainly something to pursue -- but you ain't ever going to fix the shattered femur so it can heal without acknowledging that the horse kicked it so hard at an angle that it broke displaced the bone.

So I am going to be VERY clear about my experience of what happened and where I stand on it and what I consider is and isn't within my power to change and what you can and should expect of me -- and what you should NOT expect of me without the root source being acknowledged and dealt with. Because as far as I am concerned, Liz, Britt, and Delta Rae as a collective do not exist at all as the only way I can respect the boundaries imposed on me by the choices made in their name on their social media and as a result I do not listen to anything the band ever created or ever will create together or anything that involves the girls. If I bumped into the girls on the street or we were invited to the same space by a mutual, I would be very distant polite but there would be no warmth or admiration or love or connection from me toward them and I would extricate myself as quickly as possible so I could do my best to once more forget the interaction and anything we discussed and that they exist at all in compliance with the boundaries they created and what their ghosting me trying to bring it up and talk about it and heal things.  This can't be bridged except by making them acknowledge and own up to their past choices rather than being defensive about what they did and why they did it -- and without that none of the three accounts that blocked me in 2018 will exist in my subjective world no matter what they do or how much they try to "notice me notice me" behaviors. They burned those bridges the day they hit block, whatever their reasons for it, and you shouldn't expect from me anything but a very literal logical extension of their choices and their boundaries into everything they do or touch or are involved in. And that includes the band as a collective since the day someone hit block on the band account in Oct 2018 and then when I tried to bring it up when they went indie, rather than talking about it or checking the "blocked accounts" on the band's account, they just ghosted my every attempt but liked the victim blaming attacks on me from some of their diehards.  It doesn't matter when the song was written and when it's from -- if it's from the collective or was recorded/played by the collective, I won't listen to it or have a positive reaction to it and it does not and will not exist to me for as long as I am blocked on the band's instagram account. Period. No matter how much I loved it beforehand or how much I should/could/would love it or how deeply it should resonate with me, it ceased to exist to me on Oct 2018. And it will continue not existing to me  as long as the boundary exists of me being blocked on the band's instagram account and that statement existing in the band's name of not wishing to exist to me.

And this set of choices the girls made and have defensively stood behind when I have tried to bring it up is what made me decide that it was wrong to put Eric in the middle of this so I was letting him go and cutting ties and rendering the bond inaccessible/dormant and truncating the fatelines where our life paths come together to protect him from being caught in the middle of this dynamic created by the girl's choices and behaviors in their own name and in the collective band name. I chose for him without asking him what he wanted that I didn't think it right by him to have him caught in the middle of this petty female bullying dynamic that Liz and Britt created and so I was bowing out leaving him so he could hang onto the people and things his entire life was built around. I still think that's the best option by him. I know he disagrees and he has fought me to cling to the bond and is very stubborn that me removing myself from his options isn't what he wants or what is healthy for either of us, but I don't see how to square the circle and make it work given the choices of the girls. I don't blame him for this happening and I don't LIKE that the persons hurt deepest by third party choices aren't even the ones who made those choices, but to refrain from getting angry at him for reminding me this exists is why I won't follow him again on insta and why I didn't look into hosting any shows on his Too Late tour and I don't currently intend to pursue seeing if I can attend the shows driveably close to me.  There's just too much about the way he's laid it out, songs he's likely to include that were from the band, the likely hosts, and the likely attendees that are tied to the diehards and Delta Rae which doesn't exist to me anymore and won't for as long as I am blocked by their official account.  

I WANT a future path together with him and I WANT to strengthen and nurture the bond and I WANT everything it could be for both of us. But that doesn't happen by treating this obstacle in our connection as if it never happened and doesn't exist. because that sort of shaky ass foundation will collapse and cause us both more hurt in the future if we try to pretend this isn't something blocking us. It hurts to move closer and then have to pull back again, it hurts worse to soften and then harden up have to cut him out of me again than just the numbing pain you can grow accustomed to of accepting the absence where he has been and should be. It removes joy and meaning and hope and desaturates the world to behave that way, but it hurts more to let him back in and then have to cut it off again. And I cannot promise you that when he starts his tour this Friday, I won't decide that's a good distraction for him to give him a sense of fulfillment and joy so he won't notice me pulling away attenuating the bond before putting it to sleep and removing myself form his options so he won't be confronted caught in the middle of the consequences of choices his sister and chosen band family made for him starting in 2018.  I can't promise you I won't do that because it's exactly the pattern I've followed before and I know that it is logically the best realpolitik real world solution to this impasse for moving forward even if both our souls irrationally fight it and it kills something in the both of us to try to deny or put to sleep the bond. So I will not promise I won't do it, best I can promise is I won't given in to that way of thinking/behaving without a fight but to know it's not a fight I can win on my own given the circumstances of how much central to his life has ostracized me from having anything to do with them.

There is currently still no way for me not to pull away from him in hurt EVERY time he does anything that involves his sister, his friend Liz, or the band as a collective. The best I can do is treat them as if they don't exist which is what the boundaries the girls created in 2018 asks of me -- to remind me they exist is to cause the hurt and rejection and injustice of their "you can't sit with us" ostracism headgames choices to hit all over again. So there is quite literally NOTHING he can do that involves either of the girls or that involves the band as a collective that I won't react that way if reminded they exist. Not until the day the choices the girls made is acknowledged and dealt with and I'm allowed to have those three that blocked me to exist to me without me breaking a boundary of someone else's making. That's just how it is for me based on the choices the girls made in their own name AND in the name of the collective band account itself AND the defensive choices to ghost the fact it ever even occurred any time it's brought up while never dealing with what happened itself. And it means that EVERY time he does or even says anything involving Liz, Britt, or Delta Rae, I pull away and WILL pull away for as long as the block and the ostracism exists and isn't acknowledged so it can heal.

And that's why I decided that it's unfair to have him caught in the middle the one paying the price for the girls choices and the most logical way to keep that from happening was to remove myself from his life options and to put the bond to sleep keep him from reaching me even in the 5d because there's no way for him to not be caught in the middle as long as the girl bullying behaviors of ostracism and blocking so as not to exist to me continue. If I can't sit with you at your table, I won't ask him to choose between us, I'll choose for him that he can't reach me or find me so he doesn't have to choose who he prefers to sit with. And I will do it all over again now and every time you try to make him a pawn in your girl bullying behavior patterns. (And if you don't understand how girl bullying works, because you're not a girl or never identified the behavioral patterns for what they are, and why I accuse Liz, Britt, and some of the diehards in engaging in the behavior patterns of female bullying via ostracism, I HIGHLY recommend the book Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons (the updated/revised version) to understand how it works and why some girls engage in those sorts of games with other girls and why it's always toxic and nobody actually wins even the one who feels she "won" and queen bee got everything she wanted from creating the power conflict.)

My solution is not to engage in the behaviors and to respect the boundary the girls chose AND they chose for the guys in the ENTIRE band's name the moment someone hit "block" on me from the band's instagram account by treating them as if they literally do not exist to me. And they are not in my social group, they do not live anywhere near me, they do not cross my path, the ONLY thing that reminds any tie between me and the band and thus to the girls is Eric because of the nature of the bond between us -- and I will choose to hurt myself and him by gnawing my own damn leg off to get out of the trap and deciding there is no future where our fatelines come together and I will choose not take the opportunities he creates to try to build something together before I let him be used as a pawn to hurt me by being involved in their power dynamic ostracism driven headgames and bullying. If you don't want to sit with me, that's fine and you can make that choice, but know that one of the consequences of that choice and not facing it IS that I will reject him and reject/make dormant the bond and push him away to consign both him and me to the places where our souls die a bit so life loses meaning he can't reach me even in the 5d via the bond rather than have him be manipulated as someone's pawn in the female bullying games of "you can't sit with us." My answer is "Fine, I don't want to sit with you or anyone who would accept and condone such behavior patterns" no matter who that means I walk away from -- we're fucking adults and this isn't middle school, I don't have to sit with you or even let you exist in my world if you choose to behave that way. And you will receive no warmth or admiration or love or even respect from me for ANYTHING you do or are involved in as long as you're going to play these sorts of ostracism games. And that includes cutting him out when he becomes the remaining bridge bringing your existence back into my world.

Your choices are to acknowledge this, let's face it and heal it together to move forward OR you keep ghosting it defensively denying it pretending it didn't happen and I will respect that erase you from existing in my world. I don't know that there's a path forward where he can find the balance have both in his life given the bullying games of ostracism and my decision that if y'all won't acknowledge or deal with it then I will take the boundary at its most literal and apply it in all ways. I don't see a path for him to navigate that, certainly not one where he isn't the one hurt the deepest by his sister's choices in the band's name. Which is why I tell you that you can choose between those two choices for how to deal with the fact that her choices/actions DID happen in 2018 and continue to create ripples in the ghosting never acknowledging or communicating or dealing with it at least in the band's name  But none of us can turn back the clock and undo what she did and I can't force her or anyone else to face what she did and the consequences of it for the collective in whose name it occurred. My solution is that I can't change other people's choices so I will remove myself from his options and from his reach and from his future because if I don't he ends up caught in the middle hurt deepest by his sister's power control games she created and chooses to maintain. And I CAN promise you that as far as I am concerned NOTHING he creates with the band as a collective will exist to me as long as the ostracism of the block exists rather than have him caught in the middle. It doesn't matter the subject matter, it doesn't matter if it was written BEFORE the 2018 choices made in the band's name that erased the band and everything it ever created/creates from existing to me, it doesn't matter how EVERY aspect of it OUGHT to appeal to me. It won't reach me and if I do hear it I will do my best to erase it from my memory as quickly as possible never listen to it again by choice in order to meet the letter of the ostracism block that was created in the name of the collective and is maintained in their name to this very moment.

It's your move, but don't expect anything else from me other than trying to treat you as non existing if you do anything that involves what decided to play stupid girl bullying power tripping mind games and thus wishes not to exist to me. Be careful what you wish for because you will get it EXACTLY as you wished for it including the repercussions you didn't foresee when you're dealing with someone as powerfully fey and hand of Ma'at karmic justice like me. In the name of truth and justice and karmic balance, I will give you EXACTLY what you chose and wished for until you're ready to choose differently. 

I WANT to open up to him and welcome him in and choose each other  and strengthen the bond between us and find a path forward that takes us to where we want to be and I DEFINITELY want to stop repeating old toxic cycles -- but I don't see the way to do that from here without facing the current blocks put on the connection as a result of the choices made in the entire band's name and the centrality of the band to his entire life he has built around it as his major purpose in this life. I don't know how to let him in and see where it takes us without acknowledging this block toward that connection going anywhere that EXISTS even now.

I'm not here to lie to you, not even to keep the peace. You will get my honesty or you can't have me. I will help you find a way to heal and lay out your options or ask you questions that help you find the way -- but we have to start with basic honesty not trying to lie to me or yourself or anyone else about what happened that got us here. And if you can't handle that sort of self-examination and honesty with self and others, I will walk away spend my energy and love and time with those who can. Do not doubt me that I will walk away from anyone and everything that can't have that level of integrity because that lack of integrity will just lead to greater hurt if you pretend it's there and it isn't. Mistakes happen and everybody fucks up sometimes, especially when emotions short circuit into reactionary knee jerk behaviors, but defensively standing behind the past actions because they were yours and you refuse to admit you could ever do wrong and failure to acknowledge and face them will bite you in the ass do far more damage than the initial acting out if you had just acknowledged it, dealt with it and moved forward in healthy not toxic patterns.

And that's why I can't promise you I won't try my pulling away disappearing act from him again while he's busy. I don't know what story it is he has to tell or what fulfillment and growth he's hoping for this tour to bring him, but I do know that he's excited by it and distracted same as starting a new relationship -- and that means that if I have to slip away for him to have the happiness he chooses for himself, this is the sort of timing where I would if I follow my patterns that started as cause and effect in 2018 due to the girl bullying ostracism behaviors of blocking and how/why it happened and the ghosting at trying to bring it up... And I can't say I currently see my options as being any fucking different than they were the last time he was sufficiently happy and distracted so I decided to repeat the pattern slip away from him and his options and quiet the bond til I could render it dormant because he's too busy to notice me doing it. And I do know he's so excited and focused and full of hope and optimism right now and I don't want to steal any of that from him and I truly hope this tour of his takes him to the happiness he's seeking and choosing for himself, I genuinely want that for him. I just don't see it leading him toward me or deepening the connection between us or any path to taking the steps toward setting the shattered bone so it can heal in a more functional way with less pain/difficulties. 

Maybe I'm wrong.... the possibility I'm wrong headed and could cause a LOT of unnecessary pain if I am is what's staying my hand at this time and is why I said I CAN'T promise to you I won't repeat that pattern of pulling away from him but I CAN promise it won't happen without putting up the best fight I have in me against it to hold on to the bond tightly use that to set the course make our life choices. And I CAN'T promise you I can win this fight if left to myself to fight it alone... I can only tell you I will fight my damnedest just in case I'm wrong before I act and repeat the same toxic behavior patterns to the situation the choices made in October 2018 have created. But the chances of it happening while he's distracted and happy are much higher than when he's anxious/hurting and I can feel the pull on the bond from him.

[Post Title: Lyrics to the song Happier by Marshmello and Bastille.]

It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside, I'm not one of those who can easily hide. I don't have much money, but, boy, if I did, I'd buy a big house where we both could live. If I was a sculptor, but then again, no. Or a man who makes potions in a traveling show. I know it's not much, but it's the best I can do. My gift is my song, and this one's for you. And you can tell everybody this is your song, It may be quite simple, but now that it's done. I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words, How wonderful life is while you're in the world. I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss, Well, a few of the verses, well, they've got me quite cross. But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song. It's for people like you that keep it turned on. So excuse me forgetting, but these things I do, You see, I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue. Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean, Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen. And you can tell everybody this is your song. It may be quite simple, but now that it's done, I hope you don't mind, I hope you don't mind that I put down in words, How wonderful life is while you're in the world.

Okay so this is mostly going to be about books and independent bookstore day, but also I mgiht throw some other things in t the end. (And by might, I mean will. because it's me. And who knows where the hell I might ramble in the midst of the books posting, because again, it's me. Or it may only be books related between the books pictures. Who knows? Certainly not me. If you think I have any idea where my stream of consciousness is going to flow and what will tap out from my fingers when I sit down to write here then I have a bridge to sell you. Bold of you to assume I have any idea where I'm going other than whatever initially prompted me to hit the plus button and even within that I have no fucking idea where the adhd brain will wander and what I might uncover that needs expression/frozen into words so I can see it for what it is rather than moving fluid liquidity of emotions.) 

So the first book store we stopped at for indie bookstore day was The Book Deal, a used bookstore that has been VERY heavily promoting and paying for sponsored content about it. They opened ah hour early today compared to their normal Saturday hours starting their day at 9am, we got there at 9:30am. The entire lot was parked up, the street was very parked up and we walked in the door and the queue was already about 20 people with armloads and there were so many humans in there you couldn't really take the time to browse all the shelves that the eclecticism of used bookstore requires. So I said, "O that's way too many humans! Good on them, but it means they don't need our sales and we can come back browse more leisurely on other days. let's head to Verona instead. We can check back here on our way back downtown later but if it looks that busy still, I say we just skip it for another not so crowded time." Crissy agreed to that wholeheartedly, lol. 

So we went to Kismet Books which was busy (and smaller being in a nearly 200 year old brick building) but not AS busy and everyone there was very nice and patient and willing to trade spots not impatiently entitled and it was incredibly well stocked and curated and delightful. Adn then the upstairs area has a kids reading nook themed like a treehouse, an adults reading area or for kids storytime, and a lot of local artist's art/jewelry/woodworking (I was VERY tempted to buy myself a $30 apple wood votive candles holder for 3 votives just because the grain was pretty on it but I decided it was so plain and simple it would be relatively easy to pick out a piece of wood I like and measure put in the three holes for it and then sand it and veneer it for far cheaper than $30 and there were better ways to spend my money and to just keep the idea of it in my head as a future "random woodworking project I would like" idea for the future.)

One of my books, which was from the discount rack, is a collection of Neil Gaiman stories I've never actually read before and the woman who was working the counter was so excited for me picking it up and said she was going to manually reduce it from the $4 sale price down to $1 and I said, "O thank you!! I wasn't expecting that at all, I was excited to find it at $4 -- I really love his writing and while I own a lot of it this is somehow this is a collection of his I don't own and I've never read these stories before." And then she just teared up happy tears and she said, "O you haven't? I'm so excited and happy for you getting to read it for the first time! Thank you for buying this one! This is actually  a favorite from my personal collection that I've had to downsize because I'm moving out of country soon. It makes me so happy to know this one has found a good loving home!" So then we chatted a bit about her move and her mix of excitement/anxiety but mostly just overhwelmed with getting everything ready for the move while finishing up the sale and then moving on to all the indie bookstore goodies, lol. But it was one of those random moments of human connection and sweetness and joy shared with a stranger that you may never encounter again in your life that are what make life feel richer and more meaningful and just...brighter.. for the serendipity of them happening. Because I could have easily had the other cashier ready first or she might not have been working or on break when I came in, but the timing lined up perfectly for her to have that small shared joy closure and for me to have a little more energetic insight into where my secondhand book had been loved before it became mine. And it happened at a place called Kismet Bookstore of all possible places. And honestly, I just live for those sorts of chaotic improbable moments of serendipitous joy doled out like little surprise gifts from the Universe sprinkled at random throughout a life.Love it! I'm super excited for all the books (I do still need to find the first and the third of the V. E. Schwab young reader book I picked up, but it's delightfully Burton-esque spooky but not scary friend adventures with ghosties and I love it) but there's something extra special right now for me in that secondhand Gaiman short stories because I was able to have that random moment of connection and shared joy of its past meeting its future. 

O right! The candle smells exactly like a Wisco brandy old fashioned! Crissy was sniffing a bunch of other candles from another brand while we were waiting in queue and I reached up grabbed this one off the higher shelf and it smelled so good we both had to buy one! (It's inside a glass rocks jar inside the recyclable cardboard packaging and it encourages reusing/recycling of both after finishing the soy candle.  The candlemaker is actually from Waunakee, so right nearby local artisan, which I always like to support. Global is all well and good for what you can't easily find locally sourced, but I like to keep my carbon footprint and shopping aptterns local to support small businesses near me of REAL people not billionaires or middlemen AND to help with the planet killing logistics of plastic wrapped everything and (inter)national shipping costs. 

They also had two poster (one which was commissioned by a local artists for eight local(ish) Madison area indie bookstores and which they all had to give away and is actually how I discovered the existence of both Kismet and Lake City Books (another new to me favorite!) because Arcadia, Book Deal, Leopold's, and Room of One's Own had all shared about the poster and their promos for the day so I looked up the remaining bookstores I didn't know and will visit Republic of Letters next time I'm anywhere near Mineral Point and Mystery to Me whenever their very short hours line up with my plans to be downtown or at least Trader Joe's over on Monroe St.) Kismet commissioned a second free poster from another local artist just for them to give out to anyone who spent over $50. And then the bookmarks are oens they have out as anytime free bookmarks (And I do love cute bookmarks.)

So then the next stop after that was supposed to be Sow's Ear that was just a block away (I moved the car though as the storms were still predicted to start at 1pm at that point.) But first we stopped across the street at the Goodwill across the street which is where all the rich Epic (the software that all medical everywhere in the states runs on) employees donate to so always has expensive nice quality barely worn clothes. After trying on a bunch of thing, I did pick up a silk skirt and two very different style but very me dresses (one is a statement dress and the other I will wear all the time til I destroy it)  as well as this small stack of $0.99 secondhand books.

I can never remember which T.A. Barron books I own and which I don't but a $1 gamble is better than a $3-6 gamble. And I'm 99% certain this is the one that I am missing in this trilogy.) I'm very excited for yet another book on Joan of Arc and to have found up the book on the battle that stopped roman expansion because I distinctly remember seeing it at the bookstore in Bristol Ren Faire and wanting it but not wanting to spend full price on it when I had so many OTHER books I was buying right then.  And the last one is a Canadian scifi book about time travel that just SOUNDS delightful to me, though the more recently released second and third are currently only available in kindle format....

After that we went over to The Sow's Ear. The Sow's Ear is a cafe in the front and an indie yarn shop in the back and today was Indie Yarn Shop day as well as Indie Bookstore Day so Crissy asked we visit Sow's Ear if we went to Verona because she loves it. And I was cool with that because I actually really love getting to see all the gorgeous hand dyed yarns and the ways they feel (especially the nice merinos and alpacas) so I enjoy browsing them even though I can't knit no matter how hard I try. I have personal pixies or something, every attempt I've ever made to knit ends up snarled knotwork no matter how eagle eyed my teachers watching me are and even the most expert knitters find their yarn knotted up and tangled all around them inexplicably if they try to knit while in my presence; I love yarns and knitwear and I'm incredibly good at weaving and all sorts of crafts that involve knotwork -- but the moment it's crocheting or knitting or sometimes even hand sewing in my presence, you just get a mess of snarled knot tangles. Not while it's in a neat ball or skein, I can be near wound yarns without them getting knotted/tangled, just the part that is unwound that you are trying to work into the kitting pattern. Funny enough, they had a sample out for people to try a yarn and add a stitch on it and after I'd been in there for a while, a woman picked it up and went "O how did this get so knotted? Who did this?" and undid all the knotted parts but then when people knitting in the group knit spaces room started to complain about their knits all getting tangled, I told Crissy, "I'll just go wait in the cafe start thinking about what I want for lunch while you finish checking out." And she just laughed when she heard the cussing from the other room. After she finished with her yarn purchases then going back to purchase some wooden earrings painted to look like hand dyed yarn that I found and pointed out to her, we decided to have drinks and a quick light lunch there (their quiches have hashed brown crust sounded amazing, and they were! They also came with bonus sunflower sprouts with balsamic vinegar. I had a mushroom and spinach quiche and Crissy had a quiche Lorraine.  

Then we got some cafe drinks to go and stopped by my work to let Waffles out from her introvert recharge time snoozles with Billy Joel music so she could go outside and then play until she was exhausted ready for more introvert rest time. (She's a Cancer and spent a lot of time by herself at my sister's house so while she is very clingy attached to me she is also in some ways very weirdly introverted for a dog and will let you know when she wants some alone time in her kennel. Like, sometimes when I'm reading, she decides that the staring at dead trees game is stupid and boring and she's going to take herself to bed in the other room and just goes to her kennel whether I close it or not, and she'll do that sometimes even when Mikaela or other people are visiting after the initial excitement passes and they start reading or doing things that don't involve food or petting her or throwing a toy. She just very much LIKES to be in her own safe space all cozy. This morning she excitedly greeted Crissy then went into the kennel started licking her chops for her bedtime treat wouldn't come back out told us to go run our errands leave her some quiet sleepytime. And then the first song that randomized on the Billy Joel playlist was Just the Way You Are which is sappy but I love it so i was waiting for it to end to go away and putting away some beers that Crissy brought to share after work with me and my mum and Sarah and Karissa and I was also singing along and when I was tucking away under my desk some beers not yet going in the fridge, Waffles just gave me the most scathing stink eye look from in her kennel and so clearly was projecting, "Can you guys just go already? You're ruining my vibes!" Which was just hilarious.) Anyway, we spent some time with her until she was exhausted laying down with the ball in her mouth instead of giving it back for me to throw some more and had gone out a second time and then went back into her own kennel lay down tail thumping licking her chops telling us to go ahead go on our next set of errands.  All she wants is to love and be loved, but also Cancer (her birthday is halfway to Christmas) and osmetimes she just wants to be left the fuck alone for some introvert cozy time by herself.

Next stop for Crissy and me was Lake City Books. They're across from the children's museum, in a basement next to Bradbury's coffee shop. I made us go over in the drizzly rain on Fri night to locate it while we were waiting for our table at Old Fashioned before the opera.  It looked wonderful and had the most amazing energy (it's the newest bookstore in Madison, just celebrated its one year anniversary) but I didn't think I could shop, pay for my books and get back in time since Old Fashioned won't seat you no matter how long you've waiting unless every member of your party is present. So after finding it and showing it to Crissy she agreed with me it needed to be visited for Indie Bookstore Day.

It was so delightful and the curation is incredible!!! It also has one of the best stocked and curated fantasy/scifi/fairy tale myth retellings I have EVER encountered!!!! And we met some really wonderful fellow fantasy nerds shopping it (who were on their fourth bookstore for the day) because I excitedly grabbed a second book in a duology that I needed so I could read it and he got super excited about how that was his favorite book he had read recently and he was recommending it to everyone and was super excited for me. And then I saw his selections and two of the three were books that I adore and so then we all just got talking mutual taste books nad made friends with other people and had impromptu book club discussing and recommending titles in the genre before all parting ways. And the woman who actually curates that section geeked out over my stack I was buying and glowed at my compliments over the curation/organization into micro-genres while the other teller and Crissy were taking a picture of one I was excited baout that they hadn't seen and I grabbed the last copy of. And then she was like, "O you're the one who organically created that little book club group discussing all my favorite books in my favorite genres! Thank you for making that moment happen to brighten my busy day! It was everything I ever wanted in running a bookstore and it just happened so naturally I was just quietly reshelving nearby to fly on the wall soak it in!" I will definitely be back there now we know it exists because it's just so well curated and literally every person I encountered while in there was just delightful warm fuzzy excited happy to be in a bookstore humans. 

I'm very excited for all of them, top one is nonfiction secondhand. The second from the top I'm going to save to read in October -- it is totally an October book! (It's about a witch descended from the three witches who cursed Macbeth.) The third is the second in the duology I was excited to find. The fourth is the one Crissy and the cashier had to take pictures of to find it. The next two I conviced Crissy to also get and we might book club or read nearish timing to discuss. The last looks amazing and actually just today was in several different of my bookish emails from bookstores/publishers/reading enthusiasts.  They had a book on the humanist tradition through history I was really interested in, but I decided it looked like the sort that in 2-5 years I will find used or in little free libraries and so I decided not to buy it today when I already had a stack of books and was spending too much money beyond my budget on book shopping.... I also picked up a tote from them that I liked, I have a large collection of bookstore totes but I loved this one wanted it and it's well designed for books specifically with the box bottom and size. They also had free buttons/stickers/rubber duckies table and candy as well as the ubiquitous poster.

Our last stop was Leopold's which is also a full bar and espresso drinks open til midnight and the book area is VERY tiny organized by geographic regionality with all the subject types mixed together but based on regions. It's very interestingly curated and I always find books I've never heard of would never have even thought might exist but that I end up loving. The woman working the register asked us what number book store we were at and then proudly told us, "Good choices, but we're the best. We're small adn we never have the books people come in LOOKING for but we always have the books looking for them that they need but didn't know to look for."

I will admit it was so crowded in the book area because that's so small and noisy because of excited drunk bibliophiles in the back that we would have left if they hadn't been offering a free glass of prosecco with any book purchase. And the whole REASON to save them for last (besides them being open later than everyone else) was to celebrate a solid day of book buying surrounded by excited happy bibliphiles making new discoveries supporting local indie bookstores with a free glass of bubbly. (It was also a surprisingly delicious dry but balanced prosecco for being complimentary, not the cheap stuff for mimosas because most people at brunch can't tell the difference so long as it bubbles. I'm not surprised as they are a wine bar and curate incredible wines and pair them by region with the books in the region so you browse books and wines together. But still, a free glass to everyone who buys at least one book, I wouldn't have blamed them for using a cheaper not as good prosecco rather than their good dry well balanced house prosecco.) I only found four there that I needed that day, but I'm very excited about all of them and never heard of them before! (They also had a copy of And Then Three Were None which is my favorite Agatha Christie novel and which I read in ninth grade borrowed from my English teacher and still don't own it -- but I didn't want to buy it $19 new on a day I'd already spent so much on books... I still need to pick it up a copy for me to reread and keep for myself of that Agatha Christie title, but today was not the day.)

This one looks particularly good! It's a modern parable fable art book and was the last of the ones I found.

The rains started while we were in Leopold's drinking our prosecco (not pictured because I've been fialing at documenting selfies and memories recently) but had dried up so everything glistened wet but no active rainfall to get to the car with our new books from Leopold's. Also I had luckily found the only empty spot in the lot, directly by the door so even if it had been raining it would have been short fast jaunt during lightest portions of it, lol. Some brief heavy cloudbursts on the drive but nothing more serious than rolling thunder on the drive back to my work for Crissy to move her books to her car and to get Waffles out then Crissy went home got everything in before the skies opened up. And part of it were like Florida summer downpours torrential! Northeast of here they had large hail as well as the strong damaging winds we had all afternoon, but luckily no hail here. Just some great summer feeling thunderstorms before settling into a warm steady rain with occasional lightning dance across tonight while I have been working. Rains are stopped now though and it's late so heading home very shortly here after I finish up a few things nd drink the last of this last cuppa.

If I get the new acquisitions all catalogued in time they will all be in the book list form post of my March/April books read/acquired. But that's your anecdote infused enthusiastic with pictures version of how I celebrated Indie Bookstore Day, lol.

And while I forgot to take selfies with Crissy and didn't post to socials because I really shouldn't have spent the money and my mum would take issue with me posting it given all the unexpected thigns that broke and knowing how tight my budget is right now and that I have once again prioritixzed books over grocery shopping.... I did take a selfie of me even with my extra messy frizzy because of humidity and the bottom of my French braid is forming ringlets around itself because I love this bookish shirt I chose for the day which is an Oscar Wilde quote (and an old APT shirt from many years ago, last time they did this play which was well over a decade ago now.)

Also, my grandma's gerontology appointment is moved yet again (funny how the ones scheduled for her to occur DURING Mercury retrograde ended up getting shifted three times before occurring) because the doctor is still sick so that's no longer Monday but will be in June. Which means that my only pre scheduled have tos (as opposed to vague intentions flexible moveable have tos and plans) for the week are: my dentist cleaning/exam on Thurs, symphony on Sat night (last of the 23-24 season), and Brian's celebration of life memorial remembrance thing on Sun afternoon. And it's like days of storms/rain with a two day break for sunshine and then more storms and rain for the next week or so and it's just so PERFECT timing of weather for not busy with have tos so I can just curl up into the cozy reading and music and hygge plans!!!!

Also, before I forget again, here are the Astro Poets horoscopes for Libra and Pisces. And guess what is once more all on the same thing seem to be in dialogue with each other in a way that none of the other signs are when you read through them?

"Week of 4/28 in Libra: You know love. It like water flows from everything. Memory is love and that’s the best part of it. Green and blue on the moments. The moments of time let it be green and blue."

"Week of 4/28 in Pisces: Blue and green are surrounding. Friendship again because it begins. But then there is the book of love. There is the book of your intentions. Make everything magical." 

I'm at a point that it just makes me smile and glow a bit inside and wonder how long it can keep up because at this point it's been literally every week all year and we're now nearly to a third of the way through this year.... And it's just a pattern of stubborn consistency and beautiful mirroring that I've not seen from them EVER in like six years or so of following them (first discovering them on Twitter then signing up for the free email newsletter which includes the extended horoscopes.) And it's quite specifically ONLY a Libra and Pisces thing... Which I might never have noticed if those weren't the two that I've always read because they're my sun and my rising and because all my life before seeing my natal chart from my Aunt Linda to learn my ascendant, everyone who has met me was always surprised to learn I was a Libra because they told me I seemed more like a Pisces than anything else. Which made it incredibly funny to me to learn in high school that was my rising sign and thus the first impression people have of me.So anyway, I don't always read through EVERY sign when I browse horoscopes, but I've ALWAYS read both Libra and Pisces and only after that read the ones for other family members, now exes, and close friends. Which is when the mirroring/dialogue patterns of recurring themes betwene those two signs showed up on Astro poets starting this new year, it immediately caught my attention.

[Post Title: Lyrics to the Elton John song Your Song. I'm generally a Tiny Dancer girl and people have sung it at mes sicne I started ballet when I was like 4 and I just adore everything about it and have always rather thought of it as a promise of could bes I might grow into one of these days. But I do also have a soft spot for Your Song as my very close second favorite Elton John song. And I heard it this morning on my way to drop off the dog at work and meet Crissy before starting our bookshopping coffee drinking day of birthday twin Libras with different rising signs besties hangouts. And I've had Your Song stuck in my head ever since. Although, curiously, the version in my head is Eric covering it, even though I've never heard him cover it, because it would suit his voice and the synesthesia part of my brain and the easily earowrmed music jukebox part of my brain that will remember any words set to a melody if I hear it three times within a couple weeks span also sometimes does crazy mashups or experiments with adding instrumental layer that don't exist or swiitching a part from one instrument's color to another or even inventing exactly what a voice whose timbre colors I know well would sound like singing songs my ears have never heard them sing before. Foe someone who's not got much formal training beyond the basic is not actually a musician other than to play out songs haunting my brain or a songwriter/composer or producer, I have a very musical brain and memory system that does all sorts of things that my musician/singer songwriter friends get super excited for. I definitely have songwriter friends who have sent me works in progress in the past saying, "I want your honest critique about the songwriting where it needs tightening. And it's missing something but I don't know what so if you can work your magic I'd appreciate it!" I don't generally spitball ideas or give honest critiques unless asked though, because there's always the risk of ruffling someone's ego or telling them their baby is ugly and them saying they want to hear it but really all they wanted was praise without any constructive criticism or art/ballet/theatre kid trained critique for ideas that could make it even better. But anyway, that's a digression. My point was Your Song, which is beautiful, has been in my head all day even if my head did somehow morph it into a cover I've never heard with my ears but I can hear inside my head and know would be beautiful in the colors of his voice and is right in his ideal range. Not gonna lie, I would definitely not be at all upset to hear him cvcover it with my ears and not just inside my head.]

 O mon bon dieu...... That was so bad.... And I say that as a long time lover of Voltaire's works.... I genuinely cannot think of any time in my life I have encountered a libretto THAT boring and terrible.... It was just so bad.... I would definitely say Bernstein moved all his best songs from that period to West Side Story and pretty much every melody and lyric in Candide should have been left on the cutting room floor.... Totally understand why it closed so dang fast. The overture and scoring were gorgeous, and I did enjoy Martin the Pessimist's song. But other than that, scrap all of the librettos and lyrics and start over.... It was that bad and that boring. At just a core music composition level bad.... Crissy and I both required doubles of Suntory Toki (a Japanese single malt whisky) at intermission to make it through the second half. Dennis seemed to enjoy it though 

Blarg. I need something really good to palette cleanse after sitting through that and I don't have any musicals or plays lined up with tickets til June..... Uffda. Maybe I'll watch Greatest Showman tomorrow afternoon/evening after I get back from bookstore shopping....  I dunno, but whatever it is, it will not be anything involving Leonard Bernstein or his gods awful operetta take on Candide....

Also. Quick stop in the morning at Book Deal then Leopold's (who offer a free glass of prosecco with book purchases) has turned into a 4-5 bookstore daytime visit and stopping at a yarn store for Crissy as long as we're in Verona to check out Kismet Books because we forgot to factor in Crazy legs race closed streets and snarled traffic patterns downtown so don't want to hear down to Leopold's til after the runners are done.  I also did have us walk over to find the cute little Lake City Books (next to Bradbury's Cafe which makes the most amazing savory crêpes, both across the street from the Children's Museum) and we are going to stop in tomorrow for indie bookstore day rather than me trying to shop a new to me bookstore and leave when our table was ready at Old Fashioned which requires the entire party to be present to seat you..... I would say my bad (because it's entirely my fault) but also i feel no shame about it and have never lied to anybody about my lack of shelf control when it comes to books and bookstores. The only way to budget for me is not to set foot inside. The moment you let me step into anywhere that sells books (including the convenience stores in airports) books will be purchased, in the multiples, and it's just known.... 

Maybe I'll wait to add them to the May/June book post because I've acquired a lot of books in March/April already.... On verra. Let's see how tomorrow goes 😬

 Thinking of which:

I mentioned about all my astro and tarot people and I do follow a lot, but I have mixed feelings about it as a general thing. My science background is highly skeptical of it as a pseudo-science and the MORE pseudo-science language a person uses, the more skeptical I get and the more I want to explain it away logically. And there's a LOT about it that can be logically explained, especially if you're looking at vague statements or things ANYONE wants to be true about them. I like to play the game with astro descriptions to try applying a statement to people who don't have that placement and asking if it could be true of them AND if they would want to believe it true of them, especially if they thought they were born into it.  I laugh really hard whenever I see someone post "this is for these signs smrv" and then list half dozen or so signs that could be on your sun, moon, rising, Venus because odds are most people will have a hit at least somewhere with something that broad. But the thing that I LIKE about scientific method is that it's about asking questions and based on observation, hypothesis, experiment, result analysis -- so when you observe or experience something I don't like just dismissing it because it's not deemed science... I think there's something to be said about both seasonality and collective unconscious and there's times where however they arrived there, astor/tarot things are just too precise on the money to completely dismiss. Just because you can't logically explain something doesn't mean it isn't a path to truths. And I don't feel right questioning or disbelieving in other people's claims of mediumship or clair- gifts given how many I have and how wyrd they are and how hard they would be to prove in a scientific setting or to someone else who has never experienced them. I believe in being critical about what a person says and what they claim to know and especially what they expect or ask of you for it (I would never pay anyone money for anything related to astro or tarot for example, that to me is scammy) and I think it's important to understand the way that anxieties and learned patterns and unexamined premises affect EVERY person's subconscious readings of everything they encounter or think about... But I don't feel comfortable completely dismissing it unless it's obviously scammy or too broad or very clearly biased. So I listen and observe and learn and I compare the predictions with the reality and how it compares to other methods of predicting and there are definitely some who have a higher accuracy than you would expect with statistics, but I don't blindly BELIEVE it.  Then again, I don't always believe my own dreams and clairsentience and calirvoyance and precogs -- sometimes I try to intentionally fight a precog rather than have it be a self-fulfilling prophecy, I try to make other things happen (usually this is only with little things such as dressing in something other than I precog saw me in or letting plans be made for food somewhere other than where I precog saw us eating) and it just makes everything more difficult take longer and inevitably I end up having to change because something spills or gets torn/breaks or we get to the restaurant we tried to go to and it's crazy busy or randomly closed or something and sometimes we will try several restaurants before ending up where I precogged  and I could have saved a lot of time and frustration by just listening to the precog in the first place.... But if I assume it true than I made it true even if it wasn't before my assumption so sometimes I have to fight it try to falsify what I saw. So I would say I'm cautiously curious and observe a lot about it and gather a lot of data when it comes to astro & tarot, but I don't say I BELIEVE it even though I own tarot/oracle cards and can read a chart and tend to know what's going on in astro weather at any given time. And it also means that I make note of when astro/tarot are all saying one thing and it's not at all aligned with my personal experiences in that moment. 

I also referred to my chart for where I get my fidelity to truth (with a little t, the subjective experiential "to the best of my knowledge" truth, not the truth with a capital T objective gods eye view unchanging Truth) and those are truths about my natal chart (which you can believe astrology has meaning or not as you choose, but still the map of the heavens when/where you were born is a fact about that moment in time) but it's not where it comes from that I choose to personally keep fae rules about always truth speaking and only lying by omission, changing subject, or speaking a literal truth that others interpret differently. But there is a story behind how I arrived at that conclusion about keeping fae rules of truth speaking and honesty with myself and others, just as there is the story with my grandftaher of how my nature has grafted into it such a strong streak of "question everything everyone tells you, even me, until you've thought about it made it make sense to you." In short version, after my grandfather died when I was in third grade, I spent a long time in the hollows and one of the things about the hollows is all emotions are numbed up so you can't feel how deep you're hurting. And with no emotions at all, you have to fake the smiles for everyone and you don't really feel guilt about if the thing you're doing is right or wrong or what the motives are and there's a lot of white lies like "I'm fine" when you're not. The hollows are a part of grieving process and some people go through it as a form of depression when they have existential things in their inner or outer lives they are refusing to examine. For me, personally, it only happens when grief/loss/hurt threatens to drown me and I have to go to the emotional hollows so I don't drown in the sorrowing. So while I was in the hollows after grandpa died and putting a lot of my energy into trying to add joy and laughter into the lives of the rest of my family (because everyone was hurting and grieving and missing him) I realized that MOST people couldn't tell the difference between truth and a lie as long as you spoke it with enough conviction and that they wouldn't even question it if you sounded convincing enough. So I had observed this and decided to question it in the manner my grandpa had taught me and I found it true that most people couldn't tell truth from lie if the person speaking had enough conviction BUT that the discovery of a lie caused hurt to everyone created fractures in trust between the two people. Even a white lie to keep the peace or to make someone feel better caused such fractures in trust. So I came to the conclusion that the act of lying itself was unimportant BUT doing things that would fracture trust was greatly important when interacting with people. And I concluded that the only way to ever have any connection that is REAL or MEANINGFUL with another soul's subjective life experiencing itself REQUIRES that you have trust solid in the foundations of everything you build between you. And I concluded that SINCE trust was so integral to any real or meaningful connection with another, the only way to make sure you weren't putting weaknesses and cracks in from the start is to consciously choose a course of honesty to the best your knowledge at all times so you will never be guilty of knowingly undermining or putting in weak foundations between you and another. I decided that there is no point in putting the effort into building connections with others if you're going to knowingly destroy and undermine the very foundations of those connections. I suppose I could have decided that connections I consider worth investing in shouldn't have lies in them, not even white lies, but that they're fine for other situations but that seemed a stupid solution because why would someone deserve putting energy into them being an exception if they didn't deserve honesty? Like, why should I dirty myself for someone unless they deserve it somehow? 

I save my lies for fictions I write (which my real writing tends to spark from me asking a question then developing characters/plot/world building to discover the answer(s) to my question(s) and I really need excited readers asking for new chapters to keep me writing to finish projects and publuish -- once I find my answers I'm happy to let it just sit in my head and not get a finished out on paper or drive to publish; I'm MEANT to be publishing my books as my purpose in this life, but I have adhd so my time blindness, excitement for exploring new ideas, and occasional paralysis in battles with executive function unless I'm up against a time crunch means I'm not very good at the finishing or push to publish/release no matter how great my real writing is. And my real writing IS ridiculously good. All of it, across all the genres I write in. And I say that as a very well-read recovering perfectionist with a LOT of opinions and who reads a LOT all the time.) But I only lie in my fictions (just as I only put the great truths set in fictional framework settings for philosophical reasons) and I won't knowingly lie, not even white lie, in my connections to living beings or unincarnated spirit beings. (I don't know if I would lie to an ai or android, is it a connection or is it anthropomorphism?)

And that's also why, no matter what it is, if you ask me for an answer and don't let me distract you, you will always receive truth from me (to the best of my knowing) even if it's a painful truth I didn't want to speak because I don't like hurting people. (It's why I can be guilty of lies by omission where I don't tell someone a truth they might want to know or don't correct them or give them the rest of the entire truth; I AM still a Libra sun and Mercury with a Pisces rising, I actively dislike hurting people unnecessarily and will only do so if the only other option is the greater cruelty of lying to them.)  But if you ask me any question and keep asking until you get the answer if I've switched subjects, I'll always give you my truth. It's also a good way to make me examine what I've never examined or a truth I haven't wanted to face, just ask me questions about it and it will force me to face it until I can answer as honestly as I can. 

But it's worth knowing about me, that if you want a to know my truth, you just have to ask. Because to lie is the greatest cruelty you can do to another, it is the double hurt of the hard truth itself and the act of lying (when it's discovering) and the betrayal of trust that engenders.

Doesn't mean I can't be wrong or mistaken, and I will always own up to it apologize once I realize or learn I was wrong, but it means that whatever I do speak will be my truth to the best of my knowledge at the time. And if it's my silences that are the problem, then just ask. It's all you ever had to do. 

Also, I genuinely LIKE asking questions and being questioned and finding new ways to look at things and new things to learn and new ways to think about things -- I'm insatiably curious and I love being asked to think about hard questions (especially those that don't have facile answers) and examining it from all different views. I LIKE being called out on where I have unexamined premises or assumptions or bad logic so I can toss out the bad and replace my mental superstructures with something better. It's part of why I fall into the category of spiritual but not religious -- I like questions seeking answers better than the dogma of answers that aren't to be questioned....

I'm over on hours for the week, so I'm punched out just finishing this cuppa and watching SkyNews (talking about potato crop failures across the UK) before heading home.  Tomorrow night I have plans for dinner and then to go see Madison Opera's production of Candide. It's technically an opera, but very musical theatre, written by Leonard Bernstein based on the Voltaire novel. I'm actually quite excited for it because I love me some Voltaire -- I first read Candide in high school and it made me laugh so hard especially Pangloss as the voice of the philosophical-theological schools of optimism so popular in Europe that Candide is satirizing by confronting it with the real world and some outlandish real world scenarios. I'm also excited that James Ridge (one of the core actors with APT) is doing his first opera in the character of Voltaire who is apparently like a narrator in Bernstein's musical/operatic version of the novel. 

Warning: There's a high likelihood I may have to re-read some Voltaire jump the queue after seeing the opera version! It's been a couple years since I last did a Voltaire re-read. So I'm overdue.

Then Saturday is Indie Book Store Day and a group of 8 indie bookstores in and around Madison area have a poster for it are holding events and gift card raffles. (Arcadia in Spring Green, Kismet Books in Verona, and Republic of Letters in Mineral Point are the out of towners; I adore Arcadia because it's small but wonderfully curated so always stop there at least once during APT season. Kismet Books looks delightful and adorable and I want to go visit it at some point in Verona.)  I think all we're going to do is Book Deal first (used bookstore, will have cookies and refreshments and a prize wheel as well as free posters and the raffle entry) and then Leopold's Bookstore (new bookstore that's books up front then in back is also a cafe, wine bar, and craft cocktails bar, open til midnight every night) who are offering free glass of prosecco if you buy books. I've bought a LOT of books the last couple months (more than I've read) and money is tight so I shouldn't spend it, but it's indie book store day. And I'll just plan to be good about book buying until late June/July when APT season starts up which means buying plays in the gift shops at the theatre and visiting Arcadia Bookstore.

P. S. Yes, in the name of complete honesty I had a small mini wobble late last night and earlier today. But it was fairly small. Mostly it was some part of me getting it into my head that there is someone else he's fallen for had over and me getting petulant inside reacting, "fine. If you want someone else, you should be with who you want to be with. Go be happy and just leave me be if that's what you want." And really down the bond his response was from a place of love and bemusement that eventually got some mild annoyance through it of, "Okay then. I will be with who I want. Come here." And then just holding me in his love and every time I tried to argue he just held the bond tighter flooded stronger with love. When I went to bed, I don't remember much of my dreams, both my sleep and my dreams are rather fractured when I force myself to healing sleep through migraine phases, but I remember in all of them the theme of holding hands tightly kept coming up.

Now that I'm no longer in that mood, I find his reaction adorable and sweet and really clever funny to disarm that way of reacting. It was not a very good argument on my side given his ease of refutation and so didn't cause much of a wobble because it couldn't get any traction with the way he responded to it. I've read that knee jerk reactionary is always a product of our conditioning rather than our inner child or the versions of ourselves we want to be. And so if we want to deprogram our conditioning (even if it's of our own creation) we need to not only wait til we are calm centered to make our actionable choices, but we also need to pay attention to the ways we want d to reactionary respond in order to know what to dismantle. I already knew I need to dismantle the conditioning I put in me that there's someone or something else he wants more than me, but the brief petulance wobble showed me that I still have more work to do dismantling it. Luckily, there really isn't much that holds that reactionary conditioning into a cohesive argument EXCEPT when he chooses "not me" so if he's not doing that to feed it with new evidence then it's less insidiously difficult to dismantle than it could be. 

Also. Me getting argumentative pouty wobble like that it started around the time the auras and prodrome of migraine from the barometric shift before the weekend storms. I had been restlessly feeling I should be somewhere else all day Wednesday til Mikaela told me to sit or go in the other room I was giving her anxiety -- and aimless restlessness is often one of my earliest prodrome symptoms. But along with aura, inexplicable moody over sensitivity can happen in prodrome.  After I realized I couldn't win my argument of a wobble and he was right, I decided to do something about the signs of future migraine coming on so preemptively took some Tylenol then sent me to bed to hope to circumvent a full blown dry motion and light sensitive migraine. Then I didn't let me get out of bed tile the motion sensitivity light headedness was completely gone. It worked -- I have learned about myself that if I try to stoic push through migraines or signs I will soon have one, then I get full blown mobile of razors in a tornado wind inside my head so bad that sitting up or rolling over can set me off dry heaving. But if I pay attention and listen to the signs make me rest and hydrate and preemptively take pain meds and self care, I rarely get really bad ones where my body makes me shut down everything until it's healed enough to face the vertical world. I do wonder how many times my reactionary volatility pulling away or trying to convince me to let him go right now have occurred across these last six years while I'm in prodrome for a migraine.... Because like most people, my reaction to hurting is to self protective feel I can't pile more hurt on top of it and the conditioned response I created in my head around making me let him go... And I wonder how many times I've done that if there's been other hurts on me (including the physical of immanent migraine) that have caused the "need to act right now" force behind that reactionary pulling away from the bond.... 

This was the first time that he responded to me being petulant pushing him away saying "you should go be with who you want to be with" by him saying, "you're right, come here" then pulling me closer via the bond flooding me with love down the bond. It was  a very clever reaction, as well as being his truth, and it completely disarmed me broke right through that reactionary conditioning trying to make a mess in me.

Brains are stupid. Even the smartest brains are electrical protein jellies sending chemicals to receptors and sometimes things get messed up and the smartest brain thinks stupid things. Sometimes they even lie to you. Healing is when something breaks the old patterns of lies so you don't get stuck in old cycles. Whether you believe me about the bond to him or the third eye flow of love communication of it or think it all delulu woo-woo, it's still mental healing when you break free by recognition of the old toxic behaviors ways of thinking patterns rather than getting stuck in them yet again. 

I haven't yet followed him again on insta though, I don't trust me not to get reactionary again over anything mentioning his sister or the band both of which still have me blocked ostracized "you're not welcome to sit with us" wish not to exist to me. And I have no right to expect him not to bring up people/collectives he is a part of that mattered so deeply to him. My solution is non-attention and to treat anything involving his sister or the band as not existing at all, past present or future, because that is what is asked of me based on the choices made in October 2018 and defensively standing behind those choices ghosting any attempt to talk about them.  To follow him again on insta means every time he mentions his sister or the band it creates a conflict with me trying to comply to the boundaries his sister created for herself and the entire band as a collective at that time, and in the past that conflict I can't solve agitates me brings out my reactionary conditioning to push him away sever ties to him and be angry at him for forcing me into that condition. So I do not choose to follow him there at this time. I also haven't unfollowed him on his mailing list, x (which I'm never one), Facebook (which he's never on) or youtube (which has nothing posted on the account.) but I'm not willing to try following him again on insta given that's where the conflict started and it's where he becomes the focus of the hurt/anger and me pulling away from him trying to completely detach from him when I am reminded how he is caught in the middle of the bullying mind games his sister's choices created. And I've made progress in healing and dismantling conditioning I created in response to what happened in October 2018, but I don't think it's progress enough to stop me reactionary cutting ties to him and running over him mentioning his sister or the band on the very platform where the acts of ostracism occurred and are perpetuated from the past into the present by never being made right or even acknowledged. So I won't (yet) go back to following him on insta or giving him my attention there in my socials. I don't see it leading to anything healthy at this time and I do think it could destroy some of the recent healing progress that has been made and is still happening.

P. P. S. Also. Tonight, he's just all love with a thread of a slightly defensive possessive protectiveness holding the bond extra tight that feels like, "this is ours and you're not taking it away from me again, not even a little bit." It's actually incredibly endearing to me makes me react by wanting to hug the bond closer and send reassurance and love back to him, and not just because there's so much headiness of love light flowing in.

 All my astro and tarot people have been doom speaking about the Scorpio full moon as being this dramatic emotional upheaval tower things falling apart and dying and endings... And it feels like I'm living in an alternate universe from them all. I can't tell if it's because I have a Scorpio stellium (including my Venus and Pluto) within my eighth house (based on where my natal eighth to ninth switch falls in Scorpio) and Pisces rising so I'm just naturally comfortable in deep waters or because all of the inner digging up I've been doing to face stuff and the place my inner life is in right now, but I feel almost the exact opposite. I feel... a very gentle but strong sense of being held in love floating in a calm sea waiting for the what comes next but with the trust that it's a bit like the dawn lighting up into day, something completely different than what's come before.  

Not to jinx anything, I've certainly had my bouts of agitation and overthinking and doubts and listening to fears rather than reality and fighting thrashing about like a fish trapped in a net can't find a way free from everything closing in -- but it's not how I feel now. I feel like the worst is over because it has been and is being faced with honesty by both of us and so now is the soothing of healing rest before the excitement of discovery of what comes next.

It's just funny because it's so opposed to the catastrophizing of all the pink moon in Scorpio from everyone everywhere.  I mean, I do recognize that overall, astrotok has shifted all of astro/tarot toward clickbait style catastrophizing to game the algos. but this seems excessive for a Springtime full moon. This is one of the least panicky.

Mostly what I've been feeling is calm and inner peace and rightness in trusting the process that we are nearing the versions of ourselves we need to be to come back together. That and an inner nagging that I haven't been working on my real writing enough recently and I need to get back into it more systematically. Weirdly, I've also been feeling a calling inside me to learn wire wrapping for jewelry... I've always collected and loved stones/crystals but this isn't an art I've done before, but recently I pick up certain stones and I can SEE in my mind's eye the right wire wrap job for the stone and an itching in my fingers to make it. I don't have the tools and I've never learned or tried it, it's just something that my inner self is telling me.

There's also been a whispering inside of me that if I'm serious about trusting him and healing process, I should listen to his ask and follow him again on all my socials instead of holding back from the fear of reactionary to the same toxic patterns that happened in the past when he'd show up in my stories with a "content not available" message because he had shared something from his sister or the band account that his sister blocked me on back in Oct 2018 and it just made me upset and angry and feeling the injustice of the block all over again only he was the focus because it was his stories I couldn't watch and couldn't clear out of my stories no matter what I did other than unfollowing him so that they wouldn't show up in my feed. I did TELL you that when that happened by the actions/choices of neither him nor me but of a third party's choices in his name, it was/is the source of over 99% of every single one of the toxic bad thoughts and the wrong turns and losing ground and misunderstandings between him and me these last years that have led to me trying to give him up entirely remove me from his options and him from mine. I mean, it's a straightforward cause and effect fact at the root of everything that has happened and it's never been addressed or solved, just scarred over trying to heal in spite of it. I ain't gonna dwell on it or let it guide my choices regarding him but also I ain't gonna lie about anything those actions created and birthed into the world and our relationship. there are a lot of Libras who will people please and lie to keep the peace, but I have WAY too much else in my chart that is bluntly honest truth seeking (Capricorn moon, Scorpio stellium including Venus, Sagittarius stellium including Mars) AND was raised in very bluntly honest truth speaking family where I'm one of the most diplomatic not particularly opinionated ones so I'll not be the girl to lie about what I experienced in the past or present. There's no lasting peace that can be built upon the foundations of a lie -- so don't expect me to ever pull my punches about who did what in the past if it's not been acknowledged and cleaned up. Because I won't. I'm not that sort of people pleasing white lie speaking Libra sun/Mercury with Pisces rising.

But that doesn't feel as much currently in play as it has in the past (or may be again in the future) but the focus inside me is just to relax and trust and believe that there's a way through now that we both are certain that what we want matters more than anything else getting in the way and we're no longer self-sabotaging thinking that doing so is in the best interests even though it hurts and is upsetting. 

It's really all just very calm and supportive and love in the space before what comes next unfolding. Which is SUCH a contrast to this time a year ago (when I chose to cut him off from reaching me by blocking the energy of the lamprey or anyone/anything her energy was attached into) or two years ago and that place i was in last year that I was going to stubborn bit in my teeth find someone else for this life because that was the option open to me. It's even a complete contrast with all the turmoil of digging through the inner shadow work across the last six months. (Also. I feel so grateful for where it feels like everything IS versus where everything WAS, though I feel like I still don't have the full story for how/why this is the fateline where we are now.... I still don't understand how/why he broke through to reach me again or that he realized it was important enough to him to fight to claw his way back to reach me again and reestablish the bond's full strength and choose it. I feel like there are pieces I'm missing, but right now I'm just so happy and grateful at how much better HERE is than THERE that I don't feel impatience for answers right now, that i can wait on the unfolding til I have enough information to understand make sense of it all.) 

Also. Yesterday and today he's just been all sorts of intermittent unexpected rushes of love light flowing down the bond to me. Which is always heady and lovely and delightful when he does that. Even if I don't understand the why of it, I'm just happy to have the isness of it.

So it's funny to me that it's all "past things burbling up from the depths and overturning everything" that astro is claiming with this full moon and everything else. Completely not at all the inner space I'm in right now. 

Anyway, I'm still at work for a bit and then heading home. My plans for tomorrow are to get some cleaning/chores done and reshelf books and dust bookshelves (I decided after trying it that I hated the visual look of the art books and reference over by the nonfictions and that I LIKED the way it looked first thing in the door to see the shelf full of all my French books and my dual language (most especially all my green Loeb Library Collection Greek philosophy texts -- I aspire to own them all some day even though they are individually pricey if I don't find them used) and as Mikaela told me when she agreed with me that it just didn't LOOK as good flipping them to increase logic in my book organization methods, "u don't have to use logic organize your bookshelves Dani ur not a bookstore or library" Which made me laugh so hard.  I invited my bonus sister/cousin unrelated to me over tomorrow to hang out with the animals and books and me since she doesn't have any classes and the only set plan we have is maybe I'll lay a fire for the chilly part of the morning (which is about all I have firewood stocked up at home for until I get some more. I'll probably grab some more from my parents garage whenever I'm there next because it's supposed to be a lot of rainy/stormy over the next week and that would just be extra levels of cozy.) 

P.S. Later addendum:

I guess if I force myself to peer deep into myself and examine for anything agitating me anywhere inside me right now, this is all that I find:

 I think. If I am fully and completely honest with myself. 

Every time I tried to make me give up Eric and even the hope of us reuniting this life, I knew what it would do to me. I knew the grayscale hopelessness and hollows it would send me into. I knew that trying to keep him from reaching me and putting the bond to sleep was going to desaturate all the emotions from me and that escapist distractions were all I could fill my time with while in that state. I knew what I was doing to myself and I convinced myself I could do that for the sake of his happiness, for the promise that he was going to still have all the people and things he chose for his own happiness and to build his life around. I told myself that repeatedly until I completely believed it and could use it to justify what I had felt since Oct 2018 I had no choice but to do for his sake. 

I don't claim any naïveté or innocence in me as far as what I knew I was smothering and trying to murder inside me to make it happen. But I was naive enough to genuinely believe that he wasn't going to feel it and hurt and go numb and die inside just the same as I was dying inside. I genuinely thought that in behaving the way I did, I was getting myself out of the way so he could build himself the life he chose centered around everyone and everything he loved and cherished the most that lit him up from the inside.  It never occurred to me that something inside him might be dying inside just the same as was happening to me.... Not even once. Not until he was honest about it and it terrified me that I might have been what did that to him and I needed to double check make sure that if it was me, the next time he would be so sure he had everything he wanted in his life he'd not even notice my absence and so couldn't die away inside no matter what the separation and closing him off from reaching me did to me. 

I didn't understand the depths of what it did to him, every time, because I genuinely believed he had built himself a life around everyone and all the happiness he chose for himself. And, because I had removed remaining points of contact I couldn't see anything at all about what he was going through or his emotional landscapes. I had no way to know at that point. 

And more than anything I put myself through, I'm upset with myself over what I put him through if I was that wrong... But, trying to deny that my choices hurt him (whatever made me choose the ways I did, knee jerk reactionary or good logic on bad premises or a bit of both still my choices and actions were MY choices and actions therefore the responsibility for them rests on my shoulders) won't FIX or HEAL anything, all it will do is kick the can down the line and lead to more hurting him and a lot of mental gymnastics to justify it. Only by OWNING the fact that my past choices caused him hurt (regardless my intentions) can I learn from them to find greater truth and to heal and to choose better moving forward. Trying to deny to myself, or anyone else, that he cares and cares deeply and needs the bond to be his best truest self is a path to self-sabotage and breeding more hurt and pain in both of us. And that's just stupid doesn't get anybody any damn thing they want.