This morning there was a beautiful hoarfrost sparkling on the rooftops and limning the trees and shining diamonds all along the green grass and the skies were painted all shades of tangerine-lemon-marmalade by the sunrise. It was stunningly gorgeous. And for a short while, the sparkly white of the hoarfrost let me pretend to myself that it was a seasonally appropriate dusting of snow and that my heart wouldn't be breaking for how we have fucked over the planet given it's going to be in the 60s again this coming week.... In the second week of November.... In Wisconsin.... 

At least it should be nice enough for once last picnic (maybe?) and to sit out watch the stars afterward when Crissy and I go see Proof, our last APT play of the 2023 season, on Weds. 15. (They always do one late play in late Oct/early Nov in the indoor theatre, The Touchstone, after the season closes for the year.) But my heart will be sad that the wheel of the year is so fucked up and it will be a bit of a sad sitting heavy upon me until the snow falls and sticks. Which right now doesn't look like it's in our forecast at all before I head out a month from now to visit my sister's family in Seattle area. (long forecast says there may not be a snow that sticks until after I get back at the end of December. In Wisconsin.)

~*~*~*~

So. I was thinking about it this morning. And. 

The thought I need to give up Eric this lifetime for his sake, all it's ever done for me is throw me into the hollows like I get when grieving the death of a loved one. That's it. And that's not so much an emotion, neither sorrow nor anger, as it is the absence of all emotions so that you can't drown in the deep sorrow/anger/pain. I named it the hollows as a kid after my grandfather died and I blamed myself because he wouldn't take seriously my warning recurring vision dream and made me promise not to tell anyone else in the family since it would upset them. I called it the hollows when I was nine because it's the place where you're hollowed out of all emotions. The sorrow can't touch you there, but also the good emotions like joy and love can't touch you there. Nothing can touch you there. It's the place where you are hollow and no emotions can reach you. 

The thing with the hollows is that it's easy to be stoic while there and give up things that bring you joy when you're not in the hollows because you can't be upset, you're feeling nothing at all. So stoicism, going on without a thing you desire or love, well that's easy because you don't feel the desire or love. I don't know if it's really stoic if you don't feel the loss at all -- it's like asking if doing something is brave when you never felt fear before doing it. If bravery is doing the thing that scares you DESPITE the fear, then is it stoicism if you don't feel anything about what you're going to do without while deciding to let it go? I don't know. But in the hollows is an easy place to do stupidly "stoic" "brave" brutal things because you don't feel anything at all about the consequences of what you're doing because you don't feel anything at all about anything  Where your feelings should be is just hollow.

So you see, I've never felt anything about the idea of giving up Eric because there's no place for me in his life and that's how he wants it. Because believing it throws me into the hollows of grieving and every glimmer of hope or changed circumstances that has ever made me reevaluate gives me just this upwelling surging sunrise of joy and wonder to have back something I thought forever lost to me. I don't actually know what emotions I have or would have if I really did lose him entirely have to give him up this life because he didn't want me. And I don't know how vast the hollows of grieving losing him would be, I don't know how long the hollows and their nothingness where my heart should be would last. It's not like you can see to the other side of them while you're in it.

Trying to make myself accept the necessity of letting him go is a process of pushing myself back into the grief mourning place where you feel nothing at all.... Every time. I told you it wasn't healthy for my heart whenever I try to make me do it. That's why. 

But. So. I don't ACTUALLY know what I might feel if I ever really did lose him entirely from my life this life because there's no place for me in his. I've never been there. I don't know if I ever can. For all I know, I might just stay in the hollows after that, just stay stuck in the places where the pain/sorrow of grief is so deep that you retreat to feeling nothing because you don't have the strength for feeling those as deep as they cut. 

That's part of why I decided it's so dangerous to me to have that particular unexamined premise inside me. Because if I listen to it at all, it pushes me toward the hollows the closer I get to accepting what it says. And the hollows isn't a healthy place to have one's heart. But especially not when it's based on an unfounded unexamined premise that could be you lying to yourself. And lying to yourself in a way that works directly opposed to making real anything your heart truly desires.

Does that make sense? I mean, the hollows might not make sense, not everyone gets that way where they hurt so deep over something that they just lose the capacity to feel anything until the grief/sorrow/pain lessens to a point you can come to terms with feeling it again. I know not everyone reacts that way, but I do. I go to the hollows and I keep putting one foot in front of the other doing the things that have to be done and I keep an eye out for other people I care about who might be hurting to try to ease their burden. Until I can find my way back from the hollows, until the loss/grief/pain is no longer threatening to drown me if I let any of it reach me.

It's a strange thing. The existence of an idea in your head you loathe and don't want to be true but that some part of you keeps insisting you have to face in case it is true.... To have repeated to your own self the lie of a conclusion drawn from the changed circumstances created by the choices of a third party until your mind believes it as an unexamined truth, an obvious certainty you don't have to like but you need to accept, but that your heart so categorically rejects accepting that all attempts to force your heart to believe it cause your heart to completely shut down into the deep mourning mode of the hollows until something comes along to revive it with hope that maybe that conclusion isn't inevitable after all because maybe it's not any damn thing he wants to be true same as you don't want it to be true. 

It's a very strange juxtaposition and crossroads between my head/logic and my heart/desire. And the easy and obvious answer is to just reject the idea entirely. But my mind is too well trained in logic and scientific method and so it refuses to reject a hypothesis without evidence that refutes it. Evidence that would refute it is the one thing I can guarantee would yank that motherfucking unexamined premise right out of me because I would have proof it was false. But I don't have any sort of incontrovertible evidence to refute the hypothesis that there's no place for me in Eric's life and I'm no part of the happiness he seeks. And before you tell me that there's no evidence supporting the contradictory hypothesis that he DOES want me as part of his life and I AM a part of the happiness he seeks, don't you see that the very fact I'm not in his life or a part of the happiness he tries to build himself is evidence enough to show that hypothesis has nothing supporting it? Yes there's a difference between what a person WANTS and what a person HAS, but he's made plenty of choices and acted on those choices for what he builds his life and happiness around -- and what of those choices has ever included me? Exactly. So I can't even hold both hypotheses as equally likely based on evidence as some form of neutral.

Still. The realization I had was that it is my truth that my heart doesn't know what it would feel IF it's true the hypothesis I can't seem to reject that there's no place for me in his life and I am no part of the happiness he seeks for himself. Because my heart just retreats to the hollows of deep mourning at anything that makes the hypothesis seem to have evidence proving it true. And in the hollows, I can't feel any damn thing about anything. It's all just a hollow space empty of feelings. So I couldn't tell you what I would feel about it, because just trying to accept it drives me to the hollows where I feel no emotions at all.

And here's the kicker of it. When your heart shuts down from grief, sends you to the hollows where you feel nothing, all that remains to you to guide you is your code of ethics and your empathy. So what do you do when your code of ethics and the logic your head has followed are the source of what is making your heart shut down take you to the hollows? My answer: when your heart is in the hollows so your code of ethics and your empathy are all you have as compass to guide your actions, then you keep listening and believing and acting on the best logic you have and only when you either find your way back from the hollows OR something's sucker punches your compassion is there any chance of breaking through the hold on you. Which is why it's always been compassion when he's suffering that has brought me back to him to give him another chance to prove that insidious logic wrong whenever I listen to it. Without that, I'd just keep following the logic of the conclusions I had accepted deeper and deeper into the hollows.

Because what else are you to do when your heart is out of order until the emotions calm down enough they're not threatening to drown you? 

Maybe it's been too long and the opportunities are all used up and it's too little too late, but I'm still going to dig out every last vestige of that unexamined premise and every time any unsupported version of it tries to crop up again I'll dig it out of my brain and my assumptions. Because I don't want it in there having any say in guiding me or my ethics or my choices. Let him desire whatever he desires for his life and his happiness, but it's not for me to assume my own unimportance to him just as it's not for me to assume my own importance to him. That place of waiting in the unknown and unknowable, that's what I am trying to replace the five year old conclusion turned unexamined premise in my beliefs. 

P. S. I finished my re-read of the Hunger Games trilogy and either tonight or tomorrow I'll be starting my second read through of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I stand by my decision to read it once, re-read the trilogy as it had been years since my last re-read, and then re-read Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes again. After that, I haven't yet figured out what I'll be reading next. We will see what I feel like reading when I get there at some point next week. 

 I am not angry about what happened. I can't say I wasn't hurt, because I was, but I strive not to be now. Nobody likes rejection, in any form, but the repercussions of the acts of ostracism especially on the official band account have much bigger cause and effect ripples than just mean girls behaving like mean girls behaviors. In general, I strive not to feel anything whatsoever toward Liz, Britt, or the band as a collective. Because that's what the boundaries the girls created ask of me. And like I said, I don't have to like or understand another person's boundaries because other people's actions are outside my control but unless there's a very good reason, I ought to respect their boundaries. Because the boundaries aren't mine and I try to be the better person when it comes to acts of compassion and empathy, at least when and where I can be.

The only reason I brought it up again and mentioned this cause and effect ripples of consequences from those past actions is because I didn't LIKE that my brain had latched onto that conclusion based on the actions they did back in 2018. Whether there's a place for me in his life or not and whether I'm part of the happiness he seeks is up to him and about his truest desires. It's possible those have nothing to do with me and if that's his choice I would accept it. Because free will and all. But I shouldn't prejudge him or his desires and I shouldn't sabotage things based on an assumption. I should be in an objective and receptive space for whatever information I observe or I'm given. That's the sort of inner tranquility and Zen I should strive to be toward an unknown of someone else's subjective truths. But I haven't been. And I didn't LIKE that without any actions or words or impetus from him in any form, my brain started chiseling into me with the disheartening line that I need to accept there's no place for me in his chosen life and I am no part of his happiness he seeks. I didn't like that it spoke it as a certainty to be accepted. I didn't like finding an unfounded and unsubstantiated belief like that had crept into my unexamined premises and taken root there. 

It's not fair to him or me and at a core ethics level I don't like having an unexamined premise built on an assumption sitting inside of me masquerading as truth. It's why ever since I stepped back and questioned where the hell it came from and why I was just accepting it, I have been digging it out and examining where the hell it came from. 

It's really only in that context I brought up the old history and the current repercussions of it. Because I don't like having that unexamined premise inside me tainting my attempts at objectivity and biasing me (biasing me against what I would want to be true or to become truth) and leading me to sabotage things and turn martyr try to push him away give him up claiming I do it for his happiness sake. I don't like that in me and so I'm going to fight it and try to remove it from the ways I think and act and react. 

Jury's still out how much success I will have, but I don't consider it effort wasted. I consider it a very important task for me to do for the health of my own psyche. And also, I'm not being fair to him and anything he is trying to say if I'm listening with that storyline running through my subconscious affecting how I understand his words. Communication is as much about what the other party hears as what was said, and that's especially true for errors of miscommunication... And I would be a shitty version of me if I knowingly left and allowed a biased unexamined premise in me that was skewing my subjective hearing so what he's actually saying never would have a chance to reach me. 

And working on that means working on not running any storylines/assumptions inside me regarding his desires present/future but instead practicing sitting in the silence of not knowing and waiting for concrete observations that will illuminate truth. 

*yawns* My hair is finally dry after showering so I'm going to go get dressed then take the dog outside see if she wants to go on a walk in the wet after the rain or just outside before I make the second steep of this rose white tea to finish the last chapter of my first read of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Then coffee and breakfast and figuring out getting ready and how much time I'll be here versus heading in to work. This afternoon I'm taking my grandma to another dentist appointment, she had a crown that developed a cavity under it so had to be removed to fix the cavity then the crown replaced but the crown wasn't a perfect fit so was sent back for more porcelain added to it and another temporary put on while waiting. I don't mind taking my gran to her appointments and errands, mostly I read unless there's information or conversations I need to be part of with her and/or the doctors, I've been doing it for something like a decade now since her glaucoma got too bad for her to be safely driving herself. Honestly I'm just grateful to still get to see her and spend time with her and help her -- time with everyone in your life is finite but especially the elders. Helping with my Jewish sparrow grandma is a main reason I've stayed put in Madison where I grew up instead of considering uprooting myself to move anywhere else. Because I feel lucky that all my life this life I've had elders in it and I get to collect their stories/memories before they disappear and I can spend time with them and help them in their old age as they helped me when I was young.  So I have my morning to myself and this afternoon I get to see my gran help her get to an appointment before I head back to work to see people and play with dogs and tonight I will get hours in of work until whenever I head home.  That's the plan.

 I didn't share what I have found to be the root of that way of thinking inside me because I want sympathy or pity or retribution or some sort of blame game. I don't want any of that, that's all bullshit meaningless head games. And I ain't a girl who has time for bullshit meaningless head games this life. I don't want your sympathy or pity for the hurts the past choices caused in me and the damage that still exists because the source of the wound still exists. And I don't want any sort of retribution or blame game against those whose choices created the hurt because that won't make anything better, all it could do would be to make things worse. 

What's done is done and can't be undone -- what we can do is deal with the consequences, clean up and fix and heal what past choices broke, and learn from the messes of the past what we don't want to repeat in our present/future choices. 

The only things I want this life are what's real and honest, the realness and honesty gives it meaning, you see? If you want to give me anything this life, give me truth. (or as much truth as you have in your possession as a being living through your own subjective lens of your own experiences.) Don't give me what I want to hear, give me truths even if it means telling me I'm wrong headed or when they're hard truths or they cast me/those I love in an unattractive light. I prefer the truth, warts and all, over the prettiest lie to save face. Honesty gives meaning to what's given, a lie gives a lack of trust in either the liar or the person you're lying to. 

And if I tell you I want honesty, then that means I have to be brave enough to give of my truth in exchange. Even when it's not pretty. 

And part of my truth is that I have spent over five years teaching myself that the best way I'm allowed to love him in this life is to release him from any of my own claims on him and to set him free to pursue whatever happiness he chooses to build his life around. That to love him requires of me that I release him from me and make no demands of my own desires and instead try to erase myself from his options because the bulk of what his life is built around is within the boundaries of what isn't allowed to exist to me if I am to respect his sister's boundaries she created and has maintained across these years. I've spent the last five years accepting that voice of certainty inside me telling me I have no place in his life and cannot have any place in his life given the actions that happened in the band's name and the boundaries that exclude and ostracize me that were placed around the things that matter most to him and he has built his entire adult life around. It doesn't matter that they're not boundaries of his creation, it matters that they are personal boundaries created in his name that are to be respected as the choices of those who made them for themselves. It's not my place to judge another person's personal boundaries or to demand an explanation, it's my place to respect them as best I can. And the best I can respect the boundaries of actions that state, "I do not wish to exist to you" is to zero out all emotions within me toward what doesn't exist, work to not see or interact with what doesn't exist to the best of my abilities, and to give distant comme il faut politeness in public spaces when an interaction is unavoidable and then to go back as quickly as I may to trying to respect your boundary not to exist to me.

And again, when what I have been explicitly informed by active choices is not to exist to me are the foundational pillars his adult life are built around, is it any wonder that I drew the conclusion from his sister's actions and choices that there was no place for me in his life under those conditions?

That was the conclusion I drew just over five years ago due to her actions/choices. That was the hard truth I made me face and the bitter pill I kept making me swallow until it was just one more heavy thing in this world as it is in this lifetime. When I gave them the out of blaming previous management and an opportunity to fix or at least acknowledgement what had been done in the band's name once they went inside, what I received was no responses from anyone related to the band and victim blaming from their fans. The only person who acknowledged with any sympathy and insisted it must be all a mistake was actually one of their cousins -- but given her solution was to bring it up to his sister, I feel great affection for the cousin's kindness and good intentions but nothing happened for all her efforts or mine. Or rather, nothing happened to heal what was broken. But Eric ignoring and never responding when I specifically sent him a dm about it meant that the bitter truth was transferred as confirmed by his choices and (in)actions as well that he was okay with and desired a future where there was no place for me in his life because I didn't matter to him and held no part in the happiness he sought for himself. 

So I accepted that corollary conclusion. I didn't LIKE it, but I accepted it. And so this belief has been growing in me since August 2019 that HE doesn't want to have any place for me in his life and HE doesn't include me in any way as any part of the happiness he seeks for his life. 

And it's why everything I have done since then and every lens through which I have understood what he has said and done has included as a basic unexamined premise that removing me from his options is necessary for his happiness because I have no place in it. It's why every step along the way these last years I have continuously fought my own selfish desires and tried to erase me from his options and all his paths, especially when he has found anyone or anything else that he fell in love with and thought would bring him to the happiness he seeks. And right or wrong headed, the fact that I genuinely BELIEVED that I had no place in his life he would build for himself or the future he desires for himself has informed every choice I have made and every way I have understood every single thing he has said and done since August 2019. 

It hasn't stopped me wishing and wanting him to be happy. It hasn't stopped me being upset whenever he isn't. It hasn't stopped me feeling the urge to rush in and make right and figure out what he needs to make him happy. I've done all these things, every time I can feel the depths of hurt or sorrow in him. Because I don't want him to hurt or be sad, I want him to be happy. But it does mean that every time he finds his way to some happiness carved out for himself, some path he starts walking down toward whatever dreams and hopes and plans he builds for himself and his future, that voice gets louder saying that there's no place for me in his life or the happiness he's seeking. And the belief has spoken all these years as statement of fact, not a question, and it has stung my conscience until I retreat and let go and accept it again and console myself with "at least I know he's happy and pursuing what he wants to build the rest of his life around" and then I efface myself out of his ways to reach me and the options open to him including pulling away from the inner bond and doing everything I can to attenuate and silence it so it won't disturb or upset his happiness. Until the next time he's hurting and instinctive love desiring to make the hurt less kicks in and I come back toward him until he's okay again and found the next thing for him to build his happiness around.

And that's been the pattern for the last 4-5 years now. It's still unknown to me if this current state of things is another repetition of the same damn pattern or if THIS time we're going to break it to try something new. I don't know what will happen, I don't know what we will choose. And if we don't break out of the cycle try something new, I don't know how many times we can keep repeating this pattern until something gets broken that can't be fixed.

But, it IS different right now in that when a couple weeks ago that voice started insisting as fact that I should retreat stop replying to his efforts because there's no place for me in his life and he doesn't want me as any part of his happiness he's seeking, for the first time in five years I stopped and asked WHY that is being treated by me as a fact and a truth and where the hell that idea came from in the first place. 

And I'm not saying that questioning it is enough to break the pattern of these recent years and I'm not saying he wants to or cares about it or has even noticed. But I'm saying I'm questioning it and I don't like having an assumption in me treated as truth and if I want to be honest in a pursuit of him reaching whatever happiness he seeks then I need to be open to listening to what that means to him without assumptions coloring how I understand him and how I react/behave. 

I can't promise it won't take me as long to dig it out of me as it has been given time to dig it's roots deeper into my core beliefs. But I don't want to believe something to be truth and in the believing make it become truth, especially when it's belief in something I don't WANT and never WANTED to be true. I don't like having it inside me and however long it takes me I'm going to dig it out even if the best I can replace it with is "what if there's no place for me in his life because he doesn't want me as any part of the happiness he chooses to build his life around?" At least it will be a question, not an assumption allowed to ossify into a belief.

And also. I don't think I can be trusted not to sabotage any improvements so long as that belief is inside me unexamined and just accepted. I don't trust me not to hit a point of saying, "Awww, look he's happy and he's figured out what he wants and a way to get to it. Time for me to let him go and erase myself from his paths again" if that belief is allowed to continue inside of me where it can at any time start whispering it is fact and truth I must accept. I don't trust me with his happiness and you shouldn't either so long as I unquestioningly believe inside me that there's nowhere for me to be any part of his life and I can be no part of the happiness he seeks for himself. I know that leaving this the way it's been these last five years, the moment he falls for anyone or anything that he desires enough he can try to build himself a happiness around it, I will start to pull away and tell myself it's for his sake I do it and then I will find a way to block him from reaching me as the last path for me to try to close off from him reaching me or being distracted by my love for him pulling him away from whatever he's chosen for himself and whatever nee life he's building around his choices. I know I will do it again, just as I've done it before, so long as I let me repeat as a truth the belief inside me that there's no place for me in his life and I am no part of the happiness he is choosing and building for himself. And you should know it too. If we don't want me repeating that pattern, then that belief needs to AT A MINIMUM be reduced from being believed a certainty to at least being a question -- but it would be best if it could be removed entirely. I can't do that right now with the tools and knowledge I have, but my GOAL is to remove it entirely even though that will take time. And until then, I will do my best to weaken it and tell it to shut up so I can let him tell me what he desires for himself. Because for now it's the best I've got for how I can deal with it now that I recognize it should be questioned not just accepted.

Honesty means being honest with myself and allowing that belief to be treated as truth wrud me dishonest and not to be trusted. Because as soon as he grasps onto anything that he wants to build his future and happiness around, I'll start pulling away and distancing myself and doing my best to erase me out of his reach so I won't be a nuisance in the way. And I don't think that's right or fair to either of us....

It's why my answer is that I need to shut up the storyline of my own overthinking and instead focus on sitting in the space of quietly not knowing ready to listen to what he actually has to say about his desires and dreams. Because right now I don't have the tools to dig out that belief from me because I can't prove to me it's a false belief. Best I can do right now is question it and tell the storyline it gives to shut up because when it speaks I cant hear Eric stating what Eric wants, I just hear what that belief tells me is the truth of his choices. 

And I don't think there's anything anyone else can do to help me with this process, not unless you can dig out that belief I created in me five years ago telling me it was a bitter truth I must accept. It's why I said not to take it personally if I go silent here -- because the best I can do to combat it on my own is to work at sitting in the quiet of not knowing while active listening to whatever Eric says for himself he desires (or doesn't desire) and to let his stated desires fill the silence with his truth rather than a subjectively distorted storyline way of reading whatever he says or doesn't say. I mean, shit, maybe there's a better answer than I can come up with on my own. If you have a better answer for what I could/should do about it, I'm ready to listen (ha!) but on my own, my best answer is telling the overthinking to shut up so I can stay on a receptive state for listening as objectively as I can and making me question the assumptions/beliefs at the root of the behaviors and subjective storyline skewed reactions that created this pattern of behaviors.

 Ahh shit! I feel the ADHD need to clarify all those words in case they weren't clear enough.... Which, obviously, the best way to make too many words clear is by adding MORE words.... Obviously..... (Seriously, it's why since I was a kid I have said that words were my blessing and my curse because I always seem to have too many or too few, never the right amount at the right time. Interestingly, both my chiron (wounded healer) and my north node (soul lessons life path in this life) are in my third house which is all about communication right near each other, but the chiron is in Gemini and the north node in Taurus.)

1) good communication does require communicating from both people, give and take balance. I'm not saying I should shut up completely. I'm just saying that you can't listen while you're running your own story line. And the questions I have that plague me, I want to know his truth. So me running my own stories trying to answer it is not just an exercise in futility and toxic, but actively gets in the way of me being able to listen to what he's actually saying (whether that's in a public out loud way or on an inner bond way) that actually provides insight into the answers. So it's not that I need to shut up about everything, it's just that I need to stop running my own storylines so I can listen to the answers he gives when he chooses to communicate. And if he has nothing to communicate, that's fine too because that's his choice. But I know that listening to every whim of what ifs in my brain that aren't grounded in anything concrete about what he's feeling/wanting isn't helpful and it just fills my head with noise so that I'm not listening. So more than anything else, it's me telling myself, "That has no grounding, it's just noise" and not even to entertain it in the conversation and that it's okay to sit in the quiet of not knowing. that it's better than filling silence with all the what ifs and noise that are meaningless but can upset equilibrium.

2) I have been trying to answer those questions about the idea that somehow I'm no part of what he wants for himself or his happiness over the last couple weeks. I haven't ever questioned that assumption before when it crops up. I just, accept that it IS his truth and believe it. With no new evidence, just belief. Not because I have REASONS to believe it, just because the way it's echoed inside me SOUNDS like certainty, SOUNDS like a hard truth that needs to be faced. But that isn't the same as IS true or IS certainty.... And it struck me recently that the battle I have fought with it has been the difficulty of accepting  if given the premise that it's necessary then I need to make me accept it, not the battle of asking WHY I would think it necessary to accept that idea or WHY I think there's any truth in the idea. And those are two very VERY different battles. Making yourself accept an unpalatable hard truth is a VERY fucking different thing than asking why you think that truth is something you should be trying to accept at all. Does that distinction make sense? And, I don't KNOW why I sometimes get it in my head to thinking/believing that I need to accept there's no place for me in his life and/or I'm no part of the happiness he seeks -- I don't know what starts the cycle of it speaking up again after it's been resting for a bit. As far as I can tell, I first started to believe it as a truth (as opposed to a what if) in Oct 2018 as a result of being blocked by his sister first on her personal Instagram and less than 24 hours later on the band's instagram accounts after my honesty that the country music at shows was too painful for my color-timbre synesthesia for me to attend future shows and so I was sad I wouldn't hear the new song Hands Dirty live because I really loved the song. And the blocking got me to thinking there was no place for me in his life because those are two pillars in his life and if the boundary is that she wishes for them not to exist to me, then how can I belong in any part of his life when I'm blocked from his sibling he loves, his band he adores, and his main creative outlet? Those have been the center points of his life for well over a decade, so it makes sense to say if I'm blocked from having anything to do with those and the boundary is that they don't wish to exist to me, then there is no place for me in his life as a result of creating that boundary. It makes sense in the context of that moment for me to have said that as a truth.

Since I started digging into the questioning WHY I believe that, I'm 99.5% certain that's where treating it as a hard truth to accept that there's no place for me in his life and I'm no part of the happiness he seeks. That's not the same as digging out the belief, but it's getting to the roots of where the idea came from and how it grew to such a certainty within me sometimes. And the earliest I can find any part of myself TELLING me as fact that there is no place for me in his life and thus I cannot be any part of his happiness is following those actions happening back in October 2018. And the thing is, you repeat any lie enough times and anyone will come to believe it as truth -- especially when you are the one repeating it to yourself. And that's when it started, that's when the belief began that there's no place for me in his life and I'm no part of the happiness he seeks and it wasn't a asking it as a "what if" but it was a statement of it as fact, as certain truth. That's when it began, it didn't exist in me before then. It just didn't.

*shrugs* I did warn you I didn't like what I had uncovered and I didn't know exactly how to heal/fix it, just that I was working on the shadow work because it's needed for me not to be unintentionally sabotaging new seeds before they even have a chance to germinate let alone grow. Because what can grow, no matter how much he or I might want anything to grow, when I suddenly have an internal storm squall of emotions telling me that there's no place for me in his life and I'm no part of the happiness he seeks in his life and I need to accept those facts? So I need to work on that, or at least work on pruning it back into a "what if it's true" as opposed to something I BELIEVE as truth without questioning why it might be true.

And I'm not saying that from a place of blame for what happened or boundaries that I never made -- other people's boundaries are to be respected not questioned because they're not yours. (But also a repercussion of it is that there is nothing that Liz or Britt can do that will earn admiration or affection from me for the two women in the band or even for anything created by the band or with either of them involved for as long as their boundary is clearly that they wish not to exist to me. This isn't something I WANT, it's simply cause and effect of me trying to respect their created boundary of desiring not to exist to me. To have affection or admiration, you have to exist -- but if you desire not to exist to me then I have to zero out any reactions of affection or admiration for me to be able to respect that boundary you created.) I don't say that from a place of blame but from a place of trying to get to the root of WHEN I started believing that there's no place for me in his life and I can be no part of the happiness he seeks for himself. The belief didn't exist inside me until after I started trying to come to terms and accept and respect the boundaries the girls created in 2018 -- it never even crossed my mind to consider it let alone believe it unquestioningly before that event happened.  

And this is a particularly toxic storyline that while I'm running it anywhere inside me, I won't be listening to what he's actually saying because I'm running the assumption that I don't belong in his life, I'm not wanted as any part of his happiness he seeks in his life. And I'd rather try to clear out that storyline and to give an objective attentive space to truly LISTEN to what he's trying to say without any internal storyline influencing my subjective understanding of his words/inner space. Does that make more sense what I meant about needing to make my mind shut up and actually LISTEN to him if I want answers about him/his feeling/his desires?

 If I'm silent here for a bit, don't overthink and I promise it's not personal. It's just more. Well 1) Scorpio season, deaths and rebirths and the secrets we want to bury but need to bring into the light to be faced -- I have an eighth house stellium in Scorpio and it includes my Venus, Saturn, and Pluto. And I've been doing some inner delving these recent weeks after some serious overthinking the other week and I'm not sure I like all that I've found or that I have answers to some of the questions yet (questions like, "Why do I sometimes get it in my head that I'm no part of what he wants so the best thing you can do is try to release him so he can find what he IS seeking? Where does that come from? And why doesn't it speak in questioning what ifs? Why does it speak with certainty and assurance when it gets louder than the bond? While what he wants is a quantum state of unknown to me, why does that hypothesis present itself as a truth for me to accept even though I hate it? Why does that fear speak in such certainty? Where does it come from? And why does it sometimes get so loud that it drowns out all counter arguments and feels like it's all I can hear inside my head overthinking?" I don't know where an abandonment wound that deep and assumptions of my own unimportance to him/his life and doubting his end of the bond -- but I know that I deserve to treat it gently with compassion and healing and say that the past life choices are past not present and work on it so it doesn't sabotage the present/future. Like I said, I'm not asked to LIKE what I'm digging into, but shadow work doesn't require LIKING, it asks you to have the courage of honesty pup what you find in house def and a desire to make better whatever you find that needs healing. Save the brutality for the honesty of the digging into your subconscious whys, but treat what you find with compassion and a desire to improve. 

But the bigger reason is.... When you're speaking, you're not listening. Sometimes, even when you're not speaking out loud, you're internally speaking to formulate a response and so you're still not listening to what is being said. And I won't find the answers I'm seeking within my own head, that just goes in circles theorizes answers to the questions and gets everything tangled in "maybe this" or "maybe that" or "I want this to be true" or "I don't want this to be true so let's face the fear it might be." When my questions are all about what another person may be thinking/feeling/wanting, running on assumptions I create ain't going to get me to the true honest answers. My only chance at ACTUAL answers is in listening and listening carefully to what he shares from his own inner self. And I won't hear any damn thing if I'm so busy speaking that I ain't listening. So I have decided I'm going to put my energy into trying to listen. Not assume, not theorize, not project my own hopes or fears. To listen and wait to speak until I've listened to what it is he has inside him he is ready to try to share. Wherever or however that form takes. 

So rather than speaking, I'm going to focus for a bit on listening as the main place to put my energy. Not in the silence that is denial and trying to sever communication, but the quiet of being in an observant state ready to listen. And that doesn't mean I won't speak at all or give a reply if that's desired once a reply isn't an interruption. It just means that I'm going to work on cultivating the tranquil supportive space of active listening inside me to be receptive to hearing what IS instead of the constantly agitated overthinking all the different angles it COULD be.

If you want to see what's in the water, you have to give it time to clear stop muddying it up with the thrashing about of your every impulsive movement. It's as true about minds and desires and hearts as it is about rivers and lakes and seas. 

So just, right now. Don't overthink assume me being quiet is me overthinking about to do something reckless stupid -- it's me cultivating quiet as a space for me to listen. I promise, if there's any overthinking questions turn to something potentially toxic or good logic on a bad premise going to lead me astray, I'll speak up. But like I said, it feels like a time right now where if I'm serious about wanting answers and to KNOW what it is he actually wants, then I need to listen for his answers not just assume or create possibilities in my head of what it MIGHT be he wants. All the truths and definite answers I desire exist, but they exist within his subjective experiences and how he chooses to share them or not share them. And I'm not going to directly ask him or try to force him to share before he's ready because I know I'm overly curious ask a lot of questions so I try not to be pushy or nosy pry where I'm not invited into other people's business... And so the best thing I believe I can do to learn the answers I seek is try to quiet myself of speaking and overthinking and assuming and instead cultivate the quiet space for listening to what he has to a desire/need to share. 

I don't know how long this will be what makes sense to me or when I will be tempted to spill my overabundance of words here next... but know that for now it's a deliberate quiet I am trying to get better at allowing to be, cultivating the tranquility and patience of active waiting to listen. Not to speak, but to listen. 

At least, I'm going to TRY to work on getting quiet enough to listen. That's a lot of words for me to say how I'm going to try to shut up so I can actually LISTEN. 😂 and try to shut up my overthinking as best I can as well -- because the answers I seek can only be found by listening to him, not by trying to stumble onto the truth by overthinking what ifs. 

I'm going to go make some coffee now because I haven't had any yet.  And I should also get dressed and ready to head out to watch the noon Packers game before I let me read any more today. Otherwise I know me and I'll get so sucked into this novel that I will completely time blindness miss watching the game entirely. (Which, given how the Packers have been playing this year getting time blind lost in reading might be a kindness to myself not to watch another week of slow motion train wreck throwing away brilliant plays by the bad play calls and stupid rookie shit mistakes plaguing this season. But hey, maybe they will have figured some shit out to make things work and this will be the turn around week now that we have Jones and Dillon back. And maybe we can play great ball this week and get a win against the Rams. It could happen, gotta keep the faith as a fan that it COULD be our week this week. A girl can dream. And this COULD be our week after so many rough games in a row.... Rams are pretty banged up soooooo.... I do plan to catch the game.)  In October, around my birthday, I FINALLY picked up The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (the prequel to Hunger Games) because I've been waiting and waiting for the paperback release before picking it up because my copies of the trilogy are paperbacks and I hate having series in different size formats if I can avoid it. It wasn't my spooky season mood, but this morning I decided it was what I want to read. I did have inner questioning if I should read it before or after rereading Hunger Games trilogy because it's been years since I last read those and this is a prequel written after those to explain the backstory.... I decided to read the prequel first so I can have my first read through under my belt before the film release, then reread the trilogy, then reread the prequel for a second time to pickup what the gap of years made fuzzy about little nuanced tie ins of the prequel into the trilogy.  So that's what I'll be reading/rereading for the next little while as my at home reads. (My current in progress purse books are a collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald short stories, some I have read before and some I haven't, because the world is heavy and going to get much heavier before things get better so I wanted some glittery hopeful dance while you can fluff to counterbalance the heaviness of the world and also a book of Blackfoot Lodge Tales since November is Native American History month.)

P. S. Also. For something shiny and sweet for the end! Let's hope Astro Poets horoscopes for this week are right, yeah? They're beautiful promises make my heart sing a happy melody when I read them. 

"Week of 11/5 in Libra: So much that is light is still worth it. So let the effervescent meditation take hold in your spirit. Keep the light there as a reminder. A reminder of what you most want. Which is everything." 

"Week of 11/5 in Pisces: Finally a worth that is the day. Finally something is worth the day and more of it. You know that and yet you laugh at the seriousness. But the joy you feel will be worth it. Joy is the thing you can carry into the days after this one." 

I'll take them both please and thank you! both my sun and my rising astro poets horoscopes are beautiful light infused joyous promises for the week yet to unfold. So even if it's self fulfilling prophecy now I've read them, let's MAKE them both true, k? K!

 Yes Hawk god/Horus/Apollo can be an ass. He's very blunt and literal and he will tell you when you're being an idiot. Every time. I also don't know exactly how best to refer to him because there are some divinities I have known across multiple lives in different societies where it's the same energies, just very different names/cultures. I also tend to just say The Goddess as the one I work most often with because calling her Artemis/Britomartis/White Birch Moon goddess is a mouthful and doesn't even cover all the names I've known her as. It's easier to call the other goddesses like the Morrigan by their know names when I deal with them and just call her The Goddess for me because she's the one I've worked with the longest across sooooo many lives. But it's like, they're the same energy signatures just different names/exterior symbols. It's like when someone you know gets a haircut and changes their clothes -- you know it's still THEM even if the change to their exterior aesthetic is quite drastic. Like that, but the energy signatures of gods/goddesses/fey/devas/archangels. It just gets confusing all the names, it's easier to just focus on the energy signature than any sort of symbol or name or image people have tried to fit them into. 

But yeah, he's useful and he's very much a creature of the light and inspiration and upholding the order of how the Creation is MEANT to unfold, but he can still be an ass and will tell you every time when you're being stubborn and an idiot. 

It was interesting to me though that it's been him, rather than his sister in the dreams. The Goddess is the one who I most often interact with in vision dreams and in my psychic work and just in general -- but then I find she tends to work best one on one in solitary places not with others around.  She's very independent and likes the quiet and the untamed better than the noise of too many incarnating souls. And I don't know if her and the polar bear HAVE any sort of deity work between them over the centuries.... If he doesn't, it would be rare and unusual for her to appear in vision dream space where the polar bear is, she'd send her brother to watch over me. She tends to only break that rule if I'm somehow in danger or she thinks I need Her protection. So I guess congratulations bear, She doesn't think She needs to protect me from you right now. 

Side note: I'm not yet ready for the Christmas music radio station switch (two have switched already) and won't be until either there's snow that stays or after Thanksgiving, whichever comes first. (Obviously George Winston doesn't count, his music is an all the time no matter the seasonality thing and that includes both December and Charlie Brown.) Everyone has their own feelings about this but as a northerner Midwest girl, my feelings are VERY firmly that the midwinter holiday season should begin once we have the first snowfall that STAYS on the ground, but given global warming I've begrudgingly accepted the compromise of the day after Thanksgiving if there's no real snow that stays to start the season of lights yet but I WILL bitch and moan about the lack of snow until it arrives and STAYS damnit. That said, I was incredibly excited to get the announcement from Starbucks that it's chestnut praline latte and cranberry bliss bad season!!!!!!!!  The way some people are about adoring their psl waiting for it impatiently all year, that's me toward the Chestnut Praline latte as far as Starbucks orders go and I order WAY more Starbucks from Nov. 1 until whenever the local stores run out than at any other time of the year and I definitely will ask well into the new year if any Starbucks I stop at still has the ingredients to make it even if off the menu -- latest I ever got it was all the way into March in some small town Starbucks off the highway on a road trip to a concert somewhere and I started hopping up and down in excitement when they told me they could do it, lol. And, EVERY holiday season I have a minor fear that they might cancel it because it's not peppermint mocha or a more traditional holiday classic. But they haven't yet gotten rid of it. Not yet. Anyway. Showing up with a chestnut praline latte and a cranberry bliss bar for me is like the best way in Nov/Dec/Jan to immediately put me into happy shiny glowy can't stop grinning emotional reset. It's really basic white girl of me and really randomly stupid, but it works every time the same way that falling beautiful snow works. Only the chestnut praline latte and cranberry bliss bars you can buy, snow is a catch it when you can gift from nature, lol. Basic af, but it works every time with me and it's a lot cheaper than the other things that also work every time like a puppy or taking me book shopping or new plant friends. Music also works, as long as it's music that I love that touches my heart/soul. But a chestnut praline latte and cranberry bliss bar is probably the EASIEST/cheapest/most reliable (at least in winter months) of the things guaranteed to make me incandescent joyous shining soul lit version of me.

So intermittently over the last week or so, I've been having vision dreams with the polar bear in them again. Sometimes in bear spirit form sometimes in his current human form, spirit dreams are shifting that way. I don't really remember all of them, and sometimes what I remember aren't things I want to write out here or can think how to put into words.... But they're good and they're not outside interference or distractions or anything.... More like... We're traveling and then something gets really difficult for us to get through, like a massive patch of thick thorns with no way around it or a sudden steep cliff/mountain with no way around it but through it. And it's hard and it's tough but we just both keep working to help each other across and through it and then suddenly there's a point where we just laugh and are like "at least we're together able to reach each other through this mess" and then all of a sudden the thorny bushes blossom with huge soft roses to cover the thorns show the path through or right on the other side of a seemingly impassible boulder there's an easy pass like a trail to get through the mountain. And always, EVERY damn time, on the far side of this obstacle, the Hawk God/Apollo is there waiting and shining and just lounging there and he just says something along the lines of, "I knew you would make it through, but damn that took you guys a long time! Y'know, you could try NOT creating these obstacles of your own fears and overthinking in the first place. I mean, I didn't put them there, no other god or goddess did -- you two have been making these for yourselves. I have a bet going with my sister over whether you LIKE this sort of thing or if you're just both too stubborn to recognize what you're doing." And then he just gets up and heads off and calls back as he merges into bird form, "THIS WAY!" before he flies ahead of us down the path beyond the obstacle.

It's really really REALLY frustrating and sometimes I'm as tempted to take a swipe at the god as some of the comments the polar bear makes about wanting to get his paws on the hawk god. But also, they're weirdly good dreams compared to some of the other past vision dreams because there's nothing separating us from reaching each other in these like in some of the past ones, just unexpected difficulties we can't go around and have to find a way through. And, honestly, the dreams happen every time right after a wobble of overthinking and/or self-doubt and/or questioning if the desire really does go both ways or if that's just imaginary something I made up in my head.  And it's always after those vision dreams that I wake up clear headed after however many hours or days I spent worrying about the overthinking or doubting myself and I'm able to once again be in that inner place of faith/trust in the unfolding and that things are happening that I can't see but that will get us where we need to be if I just keep working on the things I CAN work on inside myself and my life and have faith that the love that sings down the bond and echoes inside my inner peace IS and it will manifest into reality at exactly the right time and probably blind side me in a good way because happy surprises always do. 

I don't think I need a dream expert to analyze these for me. Thanks though. Just wanted to share it because I had it again yesterday while I slept yesterday afternoon (didn't sleep last night, my sleep schedule is a little wonky again since just before the eclipse and with the veil so thin. I'm very en garde awake across the witching hours and I can never sleep across sunrise or sunset, so I'm either sleeping between sunset and like midnight/1 or after the sun has risen during part of the day. If my dog can convince me, we will head to take a nice midday snoozle later this morning/afternoon since we walked and breakfasted and had coffee, lol.)

~*~*~*~ 

Unrelated, I made a tactical error going through all my stacks of papers.... I went back into reading and got myself sucked back into a novel I started the summer after high school that is a fantasy lengthy fairy tale. At the time, it was completely unpublishable because nobody wanted fairy tales and old gods interacting with mortals. And somewhere around 200pgs single spaced I recognized my pacing issues and didn't have answers and it was so unpublishable at that time and it turns out that being a pre-med Medical Microbiology & Immunology major, French major, and Classical Humanities trying to learn second year Greek while in O chem and reading Medieval French texts while doing like 3-6 hours of dance and/or sabre fencing every day to decompress and spending your weekends at concerts and doing 24hr film fest submissions and still getting hours in at work part time is a lot more than even I could do and still make time for writing massive unpublishable at that time novels...

But the thing is. It was unpublishable THEN but there are markets again now for fairy tales and gods interacting with mortals in a way that there hasn't been since like the early/mid 90s when everything turned toward the gritty dystopia even in fantasy. But now, now there IS a place in the publishing world for this sort of novel (well series) and I figured out my answers to my pacing issues. And now my ADHD desperately wants to go in and rework/edit what I've already written and keep going on  finishing the first book of this series. (And this world has companion series about other characters who are other fairy tale tropes and the level of world building I have invested into it is pretty insane.) 

And it's so different from my post apocalyptic vampire novel and I don't think I can work on them simultaneously, it's why I'm not working on the historical novel in Victorian London while working on the vampire novel.... But I want to work on BOTH of them now.... And I'm using the excuse that I left my laptop at work last night and so can't work ahead in the vampire novel (though I could totally handwrite the next chapter after where I think I stopped in the typed copy. Because it switches character pov at each chapter and I know whose narrative and what plot points the next ones are) to allow me to get more and more invested back into this quest (and the ending of it I already wrote, because it wrote itself.) And honestly.... ADHD being what it is, I should redirect me to something more productive or at least like cleaning/chores and not let me be split focus writing in two such different worlds at the same time.... But also, something really interesting that has come up recently in several contexts is that it's the voice of conditioning that makes us feel guilty for our play time, our creative times, and not value it the wag we should. but that it's important we hear it and recognize the have tos that eventually do need to get done but gently tell ourselves and the conditioning that this is also important to our mind/soul/inner child needs and to then let ourselves keep working on our creative outlet until we reach a good stopping point or just recognize we do actually need to eat. And something I've been working on this year is carving out for myself the space/time to return to my real writing and not to feel guilty or think about the neverending list of "ought to" chores that are your responsibility when living by yourself with only fur babies and plants and books for roommates.

But upping the priority assessment and reducing the guilt in me for writing time or sketching/painting time is something I've been working on reclaiming for myself this year. Especially in the time as I was digging my way out of the hollows of grieving Audrey's passing out of this life, during the months when I went silent here and hermit hard to reach unless you physically tracked me down saw me.

Am I stupid for working on two novels/series in VERY different worlds at the same time? Probably. But there's something that feels like coming back to my truest self in coming back to my own personal corner of faery/cosmology building and this story of Fiamma and helping her best friend Rossignol's idiot quest for the hand of her sister, the most beautiful princess in the world but also literally heartless due to a mishap in the cradle and the quest for her hand is a doomed "many knights and princes have lost their head for failing at their three tasks" fairy tale tropes. 

It's like coming back to the part of me that burns bright in defiant hope and optimism to find the way through despite all the odds in the way. And right now I need that. And I think the world does too before it completes implodes goes to shit. 

P. S. The sunrise this morning was gloriously beautiful!!!!!! Just rose tinted edges on everywhere and the air all liquid gold and honey.... It's been a while since the last I saw a sunrise so beautiful!!! I love me a gloomy day and the rain and the snow skies and they make me happy cozy hugged and all.... But nothing starts a day off so shiny bright and full of hope/anticipation as the days where the sunrise is painted in an absolute glory and dazzle of color and light.

 It snowed this morning!! (Well, yesterday morning bow, lol.) And after hardly any song Jess recently, this morning my choke cherry tree is absolutely full of cardinals and robins and finches -- I've never seen it this full of song birds!! Such a small thing but it made my heart so happy! No real sunrise because we have snow skies and light flakes are swirling about even now. Maybe not much will accumulate, but my childhood Halloweens were cold ones with thermal layers under the costumes and sometimes you had to wear snow boots for trick or treating because there was enough snow to ruin other shoes. So it always takes a dip below freezing chill in the air and some ice or snow for my inner child to feel that Samhain is REALLY here. I've kinda accepted that with global warming I'll be lucky whenever there's a white Christmas and shouldn't even hope for flurries in October anymore. 

I've in a bit of a funk of self doubt verging as close as my eternal optimism gets into depression these last couple days and just.... yeah... Some of it is the money stress, that's rather new to me this life because in the recent past I've chosen fame/power/family wealth/power or I've lived native/shamanic lives where there are other problems but poverty is imposed on an entire community sharing resources. I haven't had to deal with "I am in charge of my own personal fortunes and fuck money earning is hard in colonialist/capitalist/feudalist societies when you're not born in among the oligarch ruling class."  I mean, I recognize I'm relatively sheltered have it easier than most and that I have untapped options and right now collectively this recession is hitting people harder than the news media is acknowledging..... It's worse than the recession right out of college but nobody is really talking about it because gen x/Pluto in Libras said, "This system ain't fair, I'm doing my bare minimum and nothing more" and then millennials/Pluto in Scorpio are like, "o another recession? That's just life. Money is an imaginary concept with 7-10 year cycles of death and rebirth and I lack the power to change the structures that cause these cycles" and Gen Z/Pluto in Sag are like, "I deserve better I ain't busting ass for this broken system; I need to figure out how to game this system become an influencer so I can be among the oligarchs not the plebs and focus my energy on better things, I ain't hustling for the system, I'm hustling for myself" and frankly it won't be until Pluto in Capricorn are coming of age that we will see the much needed systemic structural reforms to the economics/society from this descent of free market capitalism into crony capitalism into true oligarchy....  I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but generationally, that's where the masses are and the people with money/power aren't making the changes for a more equal society, they are making the choices to maintain/stratify further a tiered class system of humanity. Which will blow up in their faces, it always does, but I'm not an oligarch or technocrat and that shit ain't my problem this life. I'm trying to survive and live a good life where the fate of the world doesn't rest on my shoulders and tactician play the long game to win for the behind the scenes spiritual battles from spilling over into the socio-political dynamic. I have enough on my plate and there's only saving what is good that can be saved from what's coming, no amount of money and yachts will save you. Skills, useful skills may save you. And knowledge -- knowledge in your head a d/or printed/written,  ot dependent on looking it up on the Internet. 

Anyway. That's a separate issue. Don't ask the precog for what's coming unless you actually want to know what's coming....

Another thing is. Bronx has been going on about how they hate soulmate/twin flame type readings because it feeds into limerence patterns and as someone with avoidant attachment style they have limerence issues always in every relationship. And so then I went down the rabbit hole of limerence and trying to understand it and how akin it si to infatuation or claiming to be in love with someone when you hardly know then but then being unable to form real deep abiding love once you do know them. And it just got me in a deep funk of questioning with the bond and all where it falls and if it's healthy or toxic and if I should be letting myself feed into helping it grow or if I ought to be treating it like a toxic limerence pattern that should be tough love cut all remaining contacts because it's unhealthy and not helping in the formation/maintenance of ACTUAL relationships with deep love growing roots. 

It's been rather exhausting examining these thoughts and questions. 

I also wasn't eating enough and when I did it was mostly candy... I don't get super intense PMS issues, I'm quite lucky in having short painless periods where the biggest nuisance is the ick of changing my tampons and if it goes into three days I get annoyed with it -- but I do get down on myself and about a week before my period I will get one drink tipsy lightweight and as I get older I've recognized I get some not nice to myself body dysmorphia for about 3-5 days beforehand and intense chocolate cravings. Nothing super intense, just enough of an irrational pattern for me to notice and try to rationalize being kinder to myself if I can be. And then when I check the calendar and/or my period starts, I can intellectually go, "O that's what this is!" but knowing doesn't change the feelings or motivate me to do something or be more gentle on me until just about when my period starts and I look in the mirror have the realization, "o shit my cheek bines and collar bones have gotten prominently gaunt! When did I last eat a real meal?!?!" And the answer is I had grill out burgers and chips for lunch on Friday and a fairly small salad for dinner Sat night and other than that I've been eating like Halloween candy and chips and some nuts and some cider with whiskey/scotch in it for calories ever since... which I don't claim to have been healthy choices, but between ADHD time blindness  and PMS body dysmorphia, I genuinely didn't realize until tonight when I looked in the mirror after I used the bathroom before taking the dog outside HOW gaunt my cheek bones and collar bones had gotten over the recent days. So as soon as we got inside, before I could get distracted by books or writing I made me chop up and roast a big baking sheet of (mostly root) veggies (potatoes, diakon radish, brussel sprouts, carrots, half a red onion, tomatoes) with garlic and herbs and olive oil and red wine and butter and added some ghost pepper maple syrup with sel gris to caramelize things every time I took it out at 10mins intervals to stir and see how well roasted things were. I ate about 2/3 of what I roasted and put the rest away on a plate to reheat with a cooked frozen salmon patty (to get some protein in me) for breakfast. (I'm out of eggs until I go shopping next, so my current protein sources are butter, cheese, frozen meat options, legumes. Thus why I'm making the breakfast choice of a salmon patty with roasted veggies for tomorrow's breakfast.

I feel much more human and kind to myself doing the best I can between eating actual food and the rest of the bottle of red wine making me agape love of everyone. 

I don't have a proper opinion right now on whether the bond should be considered limerence or not. (I would say his falling into instant infatuation and lust with his ex girlfriend the lamprey is closer to limerence obsession/infatuation than love.) But I don't know that I have to HAVE an answer to that right now so long as I keep mindful of the question, "Am I falling in emotion with who you show yourself to be or with my ide of who you are?" Because aiming for the former true sighted reality check opens a path to abiding love whereas the second is what will always lead you down paths of limerence/infatuation/obsession and end in messy outcomes when the reality of the person can never live up to the ideal version you built in your head. I don't think it hurts for me to question it, but also as long as I keep checking my idea of him against the reality of him he shows himself as choosing to be, I can keep myself from the toxic unhealthy patterns. And I would want him to do the same with me. I don't want to have to compete against a version of me on a pedestal. We ain't Pygmalion and Galatea and I always hated that myth anyway because she never got to be a fully formed PERSON, just his idealized pedestal maiden made flesh, so he never fell in love with a person just with his IDEA of an ideal woman... (actually, my favorite Greek myths are and have always been 1) Psyche and Eros and 2) Atalanta. But I've always self identified with Cassandra.) 

Anyways. The wobble wasn't about you. Things just been wobbly recently. But making me rest and introvert recharge and eat some real good has helped immensely!  And, even when questioning leads to wobbles, I still think we're better for what the questions make us ask and how they make us (re)examine the assumptions at the foundations of the versions of ourselves we let us be.... 

I still have a lot to do editing and getting those poems in the order I want them to be for a 45-80pg first book of poetry and submission deadlin is midnight tonight.  And I have no excuses not to get SOMETHING submission ready by midnight. Even if not my best possible work (because for me my poetry has always been a second thought not my real work) you will always fail what you never even try to achieve. And I have more than 45pgs of poems, so I'm an idiot who deserves ally insults to myself if I don't even fucking submit anything, y'know?  

Right now I'm going to continue listening to Chopin Nocturnes while I finish this story in my reading this collection of classic Gothic ghost stories (literally a Scholastic Classics published hardbound book called "a ghost Stories that's purple with blue gilding on it and every story in it is Gothic/Romantic/Victorian era classic ghost stories) and drinking this last glass of wine and let the purring cat curled up on my lap keep sleeping there til I have a need to get up...but LATER damnit I'm going to have myself a manuscript of 45-80 pgs of poems (including table of contents) in some semblance of organized order that even if it isn't perfect is finished to submit by that midnight deadline because if I don't at least try for it, then I deserve whatever the world dishes out to me.... 

Also. Respect the spooky season. As much as I love me some autumn snow and I will be all in on the Christmas music and decorations in a week or so, Dia de los Muertos is until Nov. 2 and the veil stays thing in traditional Samhain celebrations until 15° Scorpio which is Nov. 7 on the modern calendar. So spooky season waits to start creeping in until AFTER lughnasadh and Yule season decorations wait until after 15° Scorpio, dang it! I usually wait til day after Thanksgiving for putting up holiday decoration, but no holiday lights til after veil thin spooky season ends and that isn't til 15° Scorpio, or Nov 7 if you want a date date damnit! 

P. S. If someone who can football better than I can could explain to me the Rasul Douglas trade to the Bills that the Packers announced today, I would greatly appreciate it. Like, he's one of the few players consistently playing good ball this season and NOT contributing to the team losses so we trade him to Buffalo Bills and a fifth round pick to gain a third round pick?!?! WTF?!?!?! Make it make sense to me..... Are we trying to suck as bad as possible this season so we can have a great hand for draft pick rebuild or wtf?!?!  We're not even halfway through the season to be giving up that badly.... Unless somebody got money on it, betting against them this season, I can't fathom it.

 So, I'm going through stacks of hand written papers and half filled notebooks (because fucking writers with ADHD man.... Lost fucking causes. I start to get things organized and assign the pretty notebooks to specific things then chaos and entropy happen and I find myself somewhere without any notebooks frantically scribbling down words so I don't lose them on any chit of paper or bar napkin I can find.... Even all my journals and musings that aren't here are almost all torn out sheets from various notebooks folded together and if I'm lucky dated on the first page but not numbered all stacked in no sensible order and not bound in a proper journal like a sane organized person does.  I actually started using this because it's convenient to me no matter where I am. It's my random bar napkins scraps of paper when I need to write something out, lol. So that gives you some idea of what the who knows what are in those unorganized random paper scraps. 

I even found the folder of all my grade school and middle school novels/writings, some of which I no longer even have the files. My retelling of Arthur, my 6th grade novella my Aunt Judi encouraged me to expand into a full novel/series about a brother and sister who were in Athens and accidentally got transported to Olympus woke up the Greek gods and reminded them we exist so brought them to the modern world. A Marion Zimmer Bradley style fantasy series I remember loving as I wrote it. I closed that folder right up for me to go through some other day to figure out what to keep, what is worth rewriting/repurposing for a more modern grownup version of me as a writer. Because nothing I was looking for would be in there.

Anyway, the reason I was going through these half organized stacks was to find ally different poems. I don't write poetry often, usually when I'm wrapping my head around strong emotions or an idea that need the structure of verse line form. But I do have a lot of random poetry scraps. And as mentioned, I spent too much money on my Audrey Pupburn when she was sick/dying and ended up with a lot of credit card debt right before interest rates rose and they're so loan shark high that I'm not making traction on paying that back down, I'm just trying to stay afloat not drown. It sucks and I should probably schedule talk to a banker at my credit union about my Home Equity Line of Credit on my condo to pay the credit cards off because that's a lower rate and the payments would actually cut swathes into the debt and give me some breathing space. I know I should, I have nothing but the ADHD to blame for not yet getting that done. Being the responsible adult in your life living in this mess of the modern world sucks. 

Anyway. Why any of that personal weights on my life right now matter is that I forgot until tonight going through my tabs that one of the writing contests I didn't close as not being worth my time is a poetry one for unpublished poets from some endowment or something with no entry fee, publication of your poems as book form, a contract, and a large cash prize. Kind of a big deal thing to forget about. But ADHD, out of sight out of mind. Anyway, if I can get my poems and fragments of observation/philosophy that read like poems into an order I like, it costs me nothing to at least submit because they don't keep ownership if they don't decide to give you the prize. 

That's why I'm going through all these papers in search of the poems and fragments. In various notebooks but also mostly just on random pieces of paper in all different sizes torn out of all different notebooks..... 

But I was thinking. And that's why I came here to tap these thoughts into the screen. I only write poetry from profound emotions in me, but the deepest hurts like the hollows of grieving death of a loved one I don't put into poetry form. I've written poems after breakups, but never about the deep grieving losses of death. And it struck me.... All the times I've tried to let go give up on the bond accept that this life isn't one where Eric and I come together, it sends me to the hollows and hits me like the death of a beloved family member or pet. And I've never written even a scrap of poem about him or about the depth of loss in giving him up or the untameable bubbling up of champagne bubble joy when I'm back on a path there's hope that maybe there IS a way for us to find each other choose each other be together in THIS life not some vague future lifetime.... It hits my emotions so deep and intense it's beyond the depths in my emotional storms that need poetry to give them form or certain mood stories told in verse form to capture the imagery and vibe in a way prose can't. Like the poem about a repeating terror of a vision dream that is why I wrote my dark poem Cwn Annwn.

Anyway. Just wanted to share that epiphany -- that trying to let him go or quiet the bond hits me like grief of a loved one dying and the hope of being together incandesces me like resurrection second chances. And all of it is too deep, too raw, too strong and intense, for me to even desire to put it into a poem. It's hard enough just surviving carrying it. And that's a just him thing. Other "lost loves" and breakups have hurt, but they don't cut so profoundly deep, and I have written poems about those others. Just not about the grieving as for the dead at the possibility of losing Eric from THIS life path in this lifetime right now. And that's an anomaly. It's a just him thing. Which makes it worth noticing. That it gut punches me like the grief of death, not just the spoiled child upset about the broken toy of a relationship breakup. 

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. So for now it's just an unusual truth about me thing. That the mourning over giving up my polar bear for this lifetime and the joy in hoping I might not have to walk this life path without him in it are things move so deeply beyond words that I've never even considered them as a source for my poetry scribbling of emotional states into word forms. I feel his absence too keenly in mourning and too deep a grief for it to be contained in words, no matter how beautifully constructed the words. especially words that anyone else might ever read.

Anyway, I'm going to drink tea and read for a bit then go back to making some order of the chaos of these poems and fragments. I have until Nov 2 to edit them and get them into the order I would want them if they were to be published in a first book... At least, if I want to even try for it. And it's a lot of money and I need the money right now because I'm actively VERY money stressed even though not talking about it much. And I have the poems, and a lot of them are really fucking good. They're just in chaos nebula form not organized solar systems forms.... (and I've known about this contest since Sept, I just forgot it lost it between other open tabs. I really don't have any excuse for doing this to myself......)

P. S. Um. Okay. I take it back. I did write one poem about him and the letting go and the hurt of it. But not while in the middle of this mess. I wrote it in 09, as a precog of what would be and the ripples of it reaching me even then. But I wrote it before our paths had ever even crossed this life. And I had completely forgotten about it until I picked up this piece of paper and saw the title ...

I don't think it's particularly good as a poem. But as a window into the non linear time blind isness of my wyrd gifts, it's priceless. Including that I wrote the wrong date as 2? because I didn't know it and that's the one edit on it I had to double check to fix. 😆 If you look really closely, you can still see the question mark under the 5. 🤣

 I have gotten (almost) all of my outdoor tasks done at work. Or at least, all the freeze sensitive plants have been brought in, nightshades that haven't been cut down for composting are inside, all the 20 bags (40 cu ft) of mulch put in the bed (though it's only half of what I need for the whole bed, and a thin layer at that because I didn't want to stop in the middle of a (relatively) clear area), the raised planter box that needs quite a significant amount of TLC (some of the boards have broken or wood rot from weathering AND this Spring one of the wheels broke off so it needs to be completely emptied of soil before it can be moved at all or and repaired either this autumn or after it comes out of storage in Spring before receiving new soil) has had over 3.4 of the soil (VERY nitrogen rich because that box has only had peas, nasturtiums, and marigolds in it the last three years and those are all nitrogen fixating plants) between the front bed and indoor plants and front planter boxes and should be completely done with moving that soil by the end of tomorrow even with a middday Packer game Zoom party with my sister's family.... I still have to harvest the remaining herb raised bed herbs that didn't get brought in and I'm waiting for my almond tree in a whiskey barrel to finish dropping its remaining leaves before bringing it in and bagging it for the winter. (They are winter hardy for all but our worst winters in my zone, but because it's in a whiskey barrel planter, leaving it outside would get ice crystal in the soil and along the roots that would kill it because the soil isn't insulated by surrounding soil and snow the way it would be if outside in the ground. So she comes in every winter.)  And of course the rest of the mulch if/when we get it before the first real snowfall. Less than eighth of an inch of flurries expected on Halloween day, but nothing that will last in the near forecast.

Funny enough, but 40s-50s gray days are some of my favorites for gardening. Which sounds very British/Irish of me but it's just really comfortable to garden at that temperature and haul things in jeans and a sweatshirt without worry about sun poisoning or overheating. I have redhead genes and very fair skin, so summertime gardening I easily sunburn which causes sun poisoning if I'm out during the scorching sun and heat of the day. I do it, but I have to be really cautious and aware of hydration and reapplying sunscreen. When it's gray days with some light rain and 40s-60s, gardening is much less of a constant checking on the time to make sure I self-care so I don't pass out and I can just state of flow hyperfocus on whatever tasks I need to get done regardless how much time passes or when I last drank any water or tea. Plus, it's really really lovely to come in with that sense of FINISHING the job and realize how cozy warm inside is and then make something hot to drink like hot cider or hot tea or hot coffee or hot cocoas and just cradle that hot mug in your hands and breathe in the aroma and bask in the joy of FINISHING the task instead of the weight of "things I still have to do quick drinking some water or iced tea or iced coffee and trying not to talk to people which would derail you but also trying to make sure you remember to reapply sunscreen... Summer gardening other than watering things always feels more like a chore to keep everything alive whereas Spring/Autumn gardening feels like the joy of completed tasks of plating/harvesting and finishing the job. 

Alright, I'm going to go finish topping soil on the indoor plants (turns out they eat it and the roots and water erosion don't completely replace it, lol) or at least the ones in the vestibule/hallway. And then I'm going to go through my veggies drawer at work and make a salad for dinner because I know I have some leafy greens to eat up and assess what I have here versus at home (my fridge at home is painfully low on food now that both CSA are ended, one where we choose and pay for what we want to get delivered and the other a small thank you box of surprises form a CSA that uses our store as their dropoff point/pickup point for this area of the west side...I need to go shopping or at least to farmer's market soon, lol) and then I will finish topping soil in the front sales floor and admin plants (I have a LOT of plants at work, most of which I've inherited form people who couldn't care for them or been gifted or found free from people who no longer want them because of their size -- the only ones I have bought to keep at work are ones that having at home would be dangerous if my cat chose assholery and chewed on them to tlel me he was upset I wasn't home often enough, lol) and then some more work at my desk (getting hours in for this coming week because I have plans to see Madiosn Opera's Tosca on Fri and then on Tues either heading to MKE for ghost stories at ICHC or will go to my mom's house for dinner and wine and to watch figure skating since Skate America was last weekend and we haven't gotten together yet) until whenever I head home. Tomorrow, back at work during the day to alphabetize some thing during the game and will put something together in the slow cooker for dinner and moving the rest of the dirt from the planter box that needs to be emptied into the bed, and watering the mid-cycle melodramatic plants (hibiscuses, fig trees, bird of paradise plants, nightshade plants) who get water every 3-4 days as opposed to every 8-12 days (and the succulents/palms get water every other 8-12 days), and some inputting/alphabetizing/filing until whenever I head home. And at some point tomorrow Crissy is going to stop by so we can get together for some discussion on my newest edits/chapters on the vampire novel because she's my accountability person who is excited for next chapters (something I need to keep me writing first drafts if I'm ever going to finish any of my real writing novels instead of getting distracted by shining new ideas) but it's been a while since we last met because life got super busy and her work has been stressful. 

P.S. I don't actually have anything to say right now to say about anything in my inner space or down the bond or regarding Eric. About all I have is that I would very much like to give him a big "I miss you and so I'm not going to let go til you're ready to let go" hug. I'd very much like that. Just physically. The bond is wonderful and a delight, but it's just not the same as being together IRL and actual hugs and in person being with someone, y'know? So I'd just very much like to give him that sort of hug, in person ACTUAL hug, and that's the strongest emotion in me toward him today/tonight. Mostly this afternoon/evening I've been dealing with plants and moving dirt/mulch and taking the dog on walks and playing fetch with the dog and munching on snacks and drinking hot tea and hot cider.

So I was pondering while laying in bed during the gloaming illuminating the fiery leaves of the choke cherry tree outside my bedroom window. (Couldn't properly call it a sunrise, more of a lightening from deepest dark into lighter and lighter shades of gloom. We had severe hailstorms on Monday ushering temps nearly in the 80s and rain in the 60s/70s the last couple days and today is light spotty precipitation not ambitious enough to even call a drizzle out of iron grey skies as a cold front moving in tonight to bring us down below freezing for like 6-8 hours in the early morn tomorrow.)  So I was laying there, trying to convince the snuggly animals that I really OUGHT to get up and make some coffee get dressed and if Waffles wanted a walk needed to get on that in case M was getting dropped off in the morning to spend the day with us (spoiler alert: Waffles did want a walk, but we agreed to keep it brisk paced to be home no later than 8:50 and that she would keep long bouts of sniffing to a minimum if I promised not to stop at the two little libraries en route that I just perused day before yesterday. Also spoiler alert: Mikaela was running too late for her mom to drop her off so I promised to be in the office by lunch to join them today and then get my outdoor tasks done to prep things as much as I can before the freeze and if I can get enough done and there's space between employee cars to cart over the bags of mulch maybe put out that before sundown at 6 now that the ground is FINALLY soaked enough I can safely put it down and have it retain moisture not repel it.)

Right. So. I was laying there cuddling the happy doggo sprawled along the length of me and kitteh curled up purring on my chest thinking about getting started on today's time imperative have tos and I just started laughing apropos of nothing because there was just an unexpected flood of love down the bond like, "Hi. Just so you know, I love you and this is real, k?" And it wasn't til after I had sent a returning wave of love and reassurance that I wasn't (currently) in the mood to do anything stupid (or try to insist it wasn't real I was just imagining it) down the bond that I had the sudden giggle quake that upset the cat enough to leave with affront and the dog to start frantically licking my neck and face because maybe we SHOULD get up for a walk not sleep snuggle all morning. And I just started laughing because, well, it just struck me as rather ludicrous how intangible any "rational" reasons for trusting and believing there's anything there or could be and yet how persistently strong and infallible the truth of it FEELS intuitively in the core knowing whenever I feel his soul reach down the bond toward me. It just sort of struck me as funny this morning at how defiant of logic and yet how unshakeable certain it is when I listen to it. (Aristotle would not approve. But Diogenes would suggest I find a chicken to pluck and tell Aristotle where to shove his logic ) 

And so then I leapt out of bed and was thinking coffee til Waffles started dancing that she WOULD like a morning walk before a midnorning snoozle so I quickly went to throw on some jeans and skivvies and a bra and tee shirt (did not brush my hair or do a damn thing with the curly bed head except run my fingers in it to assess if I could give it enough of a part to stay out of my face or if it needed to get pulled back.) And while getting dressed that amusement and hope and love was all bubbling up in me making me think of the Emily Dickinson poem and as I stepped outside with the dog, I declaimed to the tree barren of leaves and to my crow friend, Baby Jon, sitting in the tree waiting for me: 

"“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -" 

The crow Baby Jon liked that, flipped his wings and preened and then hopped back and forth along the branch excitedly asking for more so I promised him after the walk was over that I would look up the rest of it to tell him, because my pre coffee brain could only think of the first stanza right then. There was only the one young crow to greet us this morning because my murder got hit particularly hard by avian flu or poison this summer, there are also fewer squirrels and rabbits and chipmunks than usual so I'm going to guess poison probably a new lawn pesticide/herbicide poison but over the summer avian flu was bad again even if it didn't get much traction in news cycles. There aren't many of my crows anymore right near me but about half again as many more survived over by my work. Of the entire murder of 30+ who lived in the trees within a half block radius of my condo, only three that I know of survived "the sickening" and "the great fatigue" as they explained it and Jon Snow who I rescued all those years ago is not among them though his grandson Baby Jon who gave me the Shakespeare leather bookmark is one I'm very close to and is one of the few survivors -- not many songbirds around this summer or fall either, just one sparrow  visiting the choke cherry tree today instead of the hordes of cardinals and finches who usually visit to eat it. Mostly just the wild turkey flocks and about half the number of hawks as usual and  a couple owls and an occasional bluejay and a few remaining crows who are quieter and more cautious and mourning compared to their usual brash joyous chatter....

And so Baby Jon, the grandson of Jon Snow the baby crow who knew nothing when he fell out of his nest into a crowd of picnickers and dogs at Concerts on the Square over a decade ago, the crow flirted along with us jauntily cawing and exploring as we went around the big block and he hid from both flocks of turkeys we encountered because a lone crow is no match for even the yearling flock of turkeys. The bigger ones, the flock of Tom's, were NOT moving out of the middle of the sidewalk in our path til my 8:40 warning alarm went off to for if M was coming over before 9. And my morning alarms are rooster calling because the first time I found that in my options it made me laugh and 9 out of 10 times I hear it, it makes me laugh even if first thing in the morning when I didn't get enough sleep. So even though I grabbed it turned it off right away, that first startlingly loud cock-a-doodle-doo spooked the hell out of the wild turkeys, sent them running across the road faster than I've ever seen turkeys run. 🤣 it's the happiest most mischievous crow like I've seen Baby Jon in months as he watched those toms take off from the sound of a rooster on my phone alarm. He called Baby Jack and Baby Dawn (the other two survivors) who came winging in to chuckle and circle and watch the turkey toms run like that. 

And also I have no idea WHAT my neighbors must think, but I definitely first thing after taking the dog's leash off and giving the cat a few quick pets grabbed the book from the poetry shelf in my bedroom then went and opened the balcony door and sat down on my balcony chairs and called out, "Baby Jon, did you want the rest of that poem then?" And the crow came flying over to sit on the balcony and the other two sat a bit further away in the tree (they're a bit more skittish cautious of me and they're a matched/mater pair) so I read to them from one of my Emily Dickinson poetry books:

"“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me."

I read it to them three times before Baby Jon flipped his wings started strutting to tell he was good with that one for now and then he pecked at the book to ask for another poem and I laughed told him I would read them some more Emily Dickinson another day because I needed to go make some coffee now and figure out a quick breakfast. I don't actually know how much my crow friends understand, but it's like talking to the dog or cat so they know what's going on just in case they understand the words/telepathic intent behind the words. It never hurts to be polite. Especially when dealing with animals, fair folk, trees, spirits, angels, and messengers from old gods.

And yes, I am the weird elf witch girl who finds lost black tuxedo cats at midnight of Friday the 13th and lifelong befriends crows and after taking her mostly black dog on a walk, reads to her crow friends (and the cat and dog sitting inside the balcony screen door watching us) some Emily Dickinson poems on a brisk gray autumn morning less than a day before the full blood moon eclipse just three days before Samhain -- and no you can't train or shame or change that weird out of me. Either accept my wyrd (and hopefully love it) or don't but I am quite shameless and honest about my wyrd in this life and unless you want a whole world of stubborn defiance from me I suggest never trying to change that about me.

Now. Coffee and I think maybe I'll heat up some bread cheese (jaastelopeia (sp?) It's a Scandinavian thing, outside toasts crispy and inside gets gooey and it's delightful as the weather turns and for late night snacks! Best with lingonberry jam, but any tart berry jam or maple syrup or honey is like a mini miracle of delight when you're hungry after a brisk walk in the autumn/winter brisk) to have with jam because that is way less work than chopping up veggies to figure out something more substantial to make and still be hungry again by lunch time.