I’ve been going through a rough patch lately. A patch . . . oh, about 8 months long. A cave, to be sure, well-supplied with bookshelves, TV, laptop, Kindle, iPod Touch, & plenty of escapist entertainment; but a cave nonetheless, where I lived with my cat & the boy’s dog & not much else but a deepseated hurt & a need to think/feel/work my way out of it. Unlike other rough patches in my life, this one rendered me unable to communicate much, or to desire to. I mostly just wanted to be alone. Stopped most of my online communication, only kept up with a very few select friends & relatives, & even that’s been fairly sporadic.
(Except for my valued Mondays w/ Marcia & Wednesdays w/ Sylvia.)
There are reasons, of course. Briefly: changes in the relationship with my partner of 16 years, which are inevitably leading to the end of the partnership (though not the love & friendship); & the approaching death of my father (though his matter-of-fact acceptance helps with my own).
I seem to be have come out of the cave now. Not just feeling better — I’ve felt better a number of times (only to then go back into the grey again) — but actually able & willing to communicate. Maybe it was that I’m finally accepting the inevitable with my partner. Maybe it was finally getting the plane tickets bought to fly down in late April to see my dad. Maybe it was taking enough 5-HTP to keep the serotonin cooking in my brain. Maybe it’s the light coming into the days after a looooooong winter. Maybe it’s all just been perimenopause. Anyway… seems I’m back in the world again.
(Long parenthetical: My partner hasn’t lived here up here for the last two & a half years anyway because she was in school in Seattle, though we were in almost daily contact &, of course, visits. Last summer, after much internal exploration, she made the decision to transition from female to male (or FTM, as it’s oft-abbreviated), which presents its own set of challenges for someone like me, a lesbian); & more recently he’s gone into a kind of wandering, living mostly off-the-grid mode, currently living out of a backpack & bivvy bag in Nevada. As per my yesterday post — he found himself with bars on the cellphone yesterday & called me up for Google Map help. He intends to get up to Spokane later this month when my brother & I fly down to see my dad, which is important to me.)
It feels good to feel good again, for the first time in months. Not that I was was continually in the grey all that time, but even my better days were inside the cave, not able to see much beyond its walls. Why, I even feel like carrying my camera around with me again.
