I do believe in faeries

just wanted to relay the most fascinating moment experienced with Joshter recently, I meant to mention it in therapy but maybe I'll just reflect on it here - I need to make this quick because I need to pick up prescriptions and come home and bake a pie, but first I just don't want to forget....

We had been talking about really deep stuff, we've been doing this more lately, he's gotten more tolerant of it and I'm so grateful, and were exploring the topic of selfhood, and somehow swerved into this idea I've been playing with that nothing I do is ever really in my control, that selfhood/ego is a useful illusion but that everything is predestined by our genetics and we aren't really at any sort of steering wheel - that is just a useful concept to keep us feeling engaged in a chaotic world where all control is an illusion. It would be really hard to relate to others and navigate without this pretend sense of self, and that itself is also predetermined genetically.

I related to him this experience of seeing my dog's puppies come out with fully in tact, distinct personalities from day 1 of their little lives that never changed at all, no matter what they experienced. And I reminded Josh about that experience he had of reading a book written by a cousin of his who he had never known, and seeing the extreme parallels of their two lives, to the point that Josh suddenly felt like he wasn't his own person at all, that he was just a carbon copy of this cousin.

"Isn't it the most wonderful feeling?" I was expressing to him happily.

"It was HORRIBLE!" he exclaimed in abject revulsion.

It took a while for me to tease out why it felt so bad to him to feel this sensation, when it felt good to me.

But it's because - Josh's life has been great! Barely anything bad has ever happened to him. And this unwell society we live in teaches us that if we have good lives, it's because we're good people who did good things and worked hard and deserved it, and people who have difficult lives are bad people who did bad things and deserve it.

But that's completely untrue. Some of us (hi! I'm some of us) have a terrible hand of cards dealt to us through absolutely no fault of our own, and have a shitton of miserable experiences that have nothing to do with our moral capacity or self-discipline or ability to work hard or make good choices or do right things, and none of it has anything to do with deserving anything.

I'm not saying we have zero responsibility - we absolutely do have full responsibility over our lives and we have to recognize and claim that, no matter what. Who else will? This is our life, we didn't ask for it, but we have to work with what we are given as best we can. There is no other way to exist.

But we also need to understand the privilege and circumstances that brought us to good things and bad things, bad choices and good choices, the ability to see clearly enough to make needed changes, and to give others grace (while not forgiving or allowing harmful behavior) who have failed in whatever way, for not having the best chances for success.

Anyway, just something I wanted to make a note of. It was just such a funny contrast. And a fun thing to explore and share together.

In a lot of physical pain today, I guess I messed up my back doing silks yesterday. Maybe doing silks while crying is not ideal.

The tears were mostly from the stress of the home buying process. It's gutting in its terror, for me, but Josh wants this so badly and I have let him down enough times. He has done so, so much for me, I need to put some faith in him that we can do this. I would rather not. My childhood home was foreclosed on. Watching the bank take back your parents' house is an awful experience, there are no words for the way it disrupts, permanently, any psychological notions (however false) of safely, stability, a place to call home, any sort of safety net. (My grandparents died when I was young or before I was born, sick and in pain, we have no other connected relatives, there has never been anything left to fall back on.) I don't want to experience anything like that ever again.

So, I cried a lot, yesterday, signing away my life savings for an unknown risk.

I was not happy with my realtor, and then embarrassed at my own behavior (I picked him out, after all), and he called me specifically to try to help calm me down a little bit, and offered gently that he could understand, because his parents also had their house foreclosed on, so, he could see why I would feel fearful and overwhelmed. It was kind of him to listen and have some real patience with my over-emotional over-sharing. It was nice not to feel judged or dismissed for being silly or overdramatic, as is usually the way when I try to make adult/major financial decisions and get overwhelmed and paralyzed.

It's an odd sensation, to take on a massive, incomprehensible debt, and pour ones life's savings (however meager mine happens to be) but a debt that at least you can live inside? How bizarre.

Anyway it's not set in stone until closing so we'll see how it goes.

I wanted to get SO MUCH done today, but I still haven't even managed to get my appointment schedule out to open appts for the month, and here it is 3pm, the sun is out after hours of rain, most of the day is already gone and I feel like I've done nothing. But I've been busy and nauseated all day working. I wish I had more to show for it. I'll get there.

Hot flashes get more bearable when the weather cools, lol.

I need a shower desperately.

Need to box up an order and ship it, visit the neighbor's plants one last time, send out checks and pay rent and pick up prescriptions and I reeeeeeeeeally wanted to get housework done today, sigh. My back says otherwise.

Still absolutely loving the little Finch self care app, but one downside is that I have not been journaling much at all.

It got me off my social media and youtube addiction, but it has also taken my attention away from here, and I don't love that. I will figure out a way to come back. I think maybe eventually the novelty will wear off and it won't captivate me quite so much. One issue is that it asks for "reflections" and other journal-like prompts, but they are only a couple of sentences and not stored anywhere, so it really just evaporates into space and I can't learn from myself that way, the way I can here. Here I can see my thoughts and review them and look at them from a distance and it helps *so much* in processing the often unhealthy ways I view and internally express what I am feeling or struggling with. I need to get back here.

That said, I put on my app a goal of at least doing a 3 thing per day gratitude practice, here, so I will try that, starting tonight (separate entries for daily gratitude list).

...

Today I was able to do some chores in the morning, hash out some issues with Josh surrounding the house that it looks as if we may purchase together (EEP), and took a nice long hard bike ride in the last of the sunny beautiful early fall days before the rain starts in earnest, tomorrow. I will hopefully pivot to housework and baking, lol.

During the bike ride I picked up a glass vase out of a free pile, while starting the (audio) book All The Way To The River by Elizabeth Gilbert. Though I've watched a few of her TED talks, I haven't read any of her books since Eat Pray Love, but despite the fact that her concept of "souls" and "god" does not resonate with me at all and seems childish and cliche and shallow, she is charming and disarmingly honest, her love is real, she is as true to herself as she knows how to be, and that's all that really matters.

I am noticing a theme of following along with people my age, and what happens when we hit our 50s. I actually loved that Jennifer Grey wrote her memoir in her early 60s, and I want to keep an eye out for more books from women of that age, as I resonate with them more than women my own age, who seem to be lagging behind a little, mostly because most of them still have parents, haven't even been without their grandparents for very long, and haven't lost several close friends to cancer, as I have. I feel closer in spirit to 70 year olds than 50 year olds. This is not an exaggeration. I know several 70 year olds and they are just further along in life, in so many ways, that I was forced to be, way too young. Not in every way. Of course there is tons I still have to learn, I am not 70. I am not confident I will reach that age.

Anyway.

After the vase pickup I went to the farmers market for the last ten minutes, was able to get delicious brewed coffee and picked up some veggies and an inexpensive bundle of sunflowers that fit perfectly in the vase I found. Josh met me at a nearby coffee shop and we discussed/resolved more house stuff and I'm terrified but feeling a bit better about it. I still need to finish the home buyers education modules I downloaded, I am going to try to work on those in the morning. I am too tired, tonight. It's stressful but important. I want to understand the closing process better before I actually move forward.

Got a big hug from Ian at the market. I should have messaged Karissa. I will reach out tomorrow.

I didn't journal about Jasmine thinking she lost our mutual friend's cat, and then the cat turning back up magically (I suspect she may have never left and was just hiding).

I have not journaled about the festival, or the vampire ball, or the second trip to Timberline, yet. I want to write about these things, I do. But right now, I want to read my friends page and listen to my new weird quirky river book.

Going to sip this sweet gentle cup of chamomile tea and turn in early, I think. Been really enjoying the red light mask Tyler gave me. I need more mushroom hunting with that guy.

..

trimmed Avalanche's claws while she was sleeping. It's the best time to do it, sometimes she barely wakes up to protest. I had to treat her for fleas last week, after several days of suspecting I might need to - but I brushed her with a flea comb every day and never found any signs, until one day I saw flea dirt on her chin (I think the flea was also there but by the time I grabbed her to look it ran off and only the dirt was left, but it was unmistakable. But after I treated her, I checked and checked and checked multiple times a day for dead fleas or more dirt and found not a single molecule of evidence of anything. So maybe I really did catch it before they had a chance to reproduce, and there was really only one? Fortunately she tolerated the medication (pesticide) just fine and now I know she's good for a while.

...

I cried and cried and cried over my mom this morning. This happens a lot. Most days lately I don't cry as much, but today it was half an hour of soft sobbing. I don't know what to do, this sadness haunts me constantly. I need to find a healthier way to process it. Maybe I can do some research on how to process unresolved grief. I am so sad about how she died, it was a traumatic process to witness at such close proximity, for so many slow, long, painful years. I am so sad about how I treated her when I was younger, how she treated me, how it was never really anyone's fault, how I know she was doing the best she could with the tools she was given, and so was I. But it wasn't good. Except for the parts that were wonderful. It's just all so heartbreaking and gutwrenching. I get overwhelmed and paralyzed by all of it, regularly. My dad's death is even sadder in many ways, and my grandparents both also died so painfully and miserably, long before dad died, which was 25 years ago now, it's all just too awful to bear. They were all so wonderful in their ways. They seemed powerful and magical to me as a small child. (Well, I never met my dad's parents, but I remember my mom's.) They seemed like everything. To have seen all of them reduced to ash and forgotten is just... untenably sad.

...

I showed Josh the 90s movie The Birdcage last night. He asked me why Robin Williams was depressed. He looked so worried. He's seen me so sad for so long, it scares him sometimes. I don't have any way to reassure him, because it feels scary to me too, how sad I get. I do think the app is helping. I think if I can get through menopause, and get more stable, after that I will be in better shape, emotionally. We'll see I guess.