Ok I am leveling off, but still low, which means most of my energy will be spent conserving energy. lol. I do have what they call “the bipolar flu” with this one. Body aches, feeling a little nauseated, general brain fog…I texted my coach this morning, and she and I both agree that my plan on shutting myself in for a week was a good idea. By this trajectory, I literally have all of next week to play with. My coach even said that I could just attend the Zoom 12 step meetings — one is local, and has a chat board to go with it. I think I’ll do that.

This week that just passed/is almost over was supposed to be a sort of prep. Get the house all cleaned up, which…I got the living room done…bathroom too, now that I think of it. I just don’t have the spoons for getting it the way I wanted.

Speaking of my coach, sometimes I hate her (not hate hate) — but it’s like one of my biggest mental fallacies is that I devolve into this thought line of “the only people who engage with me are people I pay to do that.” And she’s over here, entirely unpaid, well past the 12 week thing we were going to do for her degree, and she still calls, we still talk, she still invites me over, etc. Like…she’s completely invested in my recovery. I like hanging out with her. She’s fun. We even play games together and hang out on discord. I think she’s an actual friend and I never realized it.

Like today, she told me to change how I look at the depressive swing I’m in. Instead of being sad, take it as an opportunity to listen to myself more closely. Yes, I’m down in the dumps, and I’m sad, but that means that my thoughts are greatly slowed down, and I need to rest and take it easy so I don’t overwhelm myself. I have all the tools I need to get through it, and if I need to set up temporary boundaries with my social life (say…stick with my friends and not acquaintances for awhile), then I need to do that.

It makes me want to go down a rabbit hole of my own malformed understanding of social structure, and how I’ve been extremely rigid in “planning” friendships and allocating time to folks. The truth is I’m already developing friendships without that rigidity. I often feel like I must show up perfect or I won’t be welcome to the table. My friends have a spot for me ready to go, regardless how I show up. But there’s this thing I do — I don’t know exactly where it comes from (recovery is teaching me that not everything needs an exact point of understanding) — but I tend to arrive at new relationships feeling like I am at the lowest of the low on the totem pole, and I must work my way up. The relationships where I simply felt seen at my level when I walk in the door are the ones where I thrive. The instant someone tries to remind me that I am not as “good” as I think is when I fall into a trash pile of self-berating and defeat. Because those words/inclinations are what I was trained to believe about myself, and they basically remind me how shitty I feel about myself, so suddenly, I’m abandoned all over again.

It’s like with my hero (they are NOT my hero, I’m just short-forming it for purposes of my blog), it was fine where things were, it was low effort, no risks, fun, and even balanced. Someone suggested I needed to find another community and that I was being ignored, and I lost my shit and it became a fight to not be abandoned. Gone were the low effort, no risks exchanges that weren’t threatening or dangerous. It split the connection into normal me and trauma me, and trauma me was so fearful of abandonment (from this otherwise normal connection) while normal me was feeling like a failure for not being able to regulate it. It took FOREVER to get the abandonment thing out of the way. After that was working with the “mother wound,” which we discovered in therapy (discovered — addressed). And that actually took on all aspects of the five stages of grief. I even got angry at them once. Once. Like…I don’t think I’ve ever felt safe enough with someone to just air it out. But I did, then I deleted it, then I cried, then I explained I just miss how things were. So yeah, self-editing but in a rather public and shitty way.

But the process with that is almost done, too. I’m finally accepting things won’t be how they used to be. Fuck the person who suggested what they did, I’ll probably never forgive them. I forgive myself for thinking they were a cool person, but I’m not going to let that go, because it will be the last time I decide someone random is possibly decent. I’ll wear that knowledge/memory/discovery like a badge on my chest, lest I forget and it happens again and a legitimately decent casual vague meaningful connection be compromised because someone else was jealous.

As for hero? (NOT my hero)…I’m taking a small break from them until I know 100% that it’s out of my system. I have a chance to meet them in April, and I’m still leaning toward “no” unless my sister finds out there’s a WebToons booth, which in that case we’re going anyway. But I don’t want to meet hero if I’m still feeling the awkwardness. I know the world is basically ending, but my gut tells me there’s going to be another chance, and I’ll be in much better condition mentally (and physically, the way things are going), and it’ll be a lot more fun to meet them when I’m better. Plus, I need to listen to my heart. It wants to meet them when it’s happy, not when it’s sad and worried. It’s not their fault, obviously. I still love the hell out of them, but I don’t want to bring my vibes to their table and start bawling and apologizing for all of this. I think they know I feel bad about everything. I don’t need to show up and make a fool out of myself to show it. I’ve already made a fool of myself online many times over this. But hey, recovery is a process, and it’s definitely not linear. This is but one example of that.

So yeah…I’m resting, up at weird hours, still getting 6-8 of sleep every day/night/whenever, and riding the wave. OH! Tommie and i did some serious bonding yesterday. I stayed in bed until 4pm because I just don’t care right now (and nothing is forcing me to care right now), and we just hung out in bed all damned day and it was bliss. She’s been aggressively cleaning my hand at night. If I try to take it back (while playing a mobile game, for example), she will literally grab it with her claws and pull it close to her and keep cleaning/grooming. She actually (FINALLY) meowed at me and we had a conversation and everything. She has never talked to me before. She’s meowed for her babies (two tiny stuffed animals – a raccoon and a squirrel) before, but never at me. Never to me. We just talked for like 2 hours. About what? I don’t know, it was chatter. But she’s finally starting to vocally communicate! I love it so much! 💛

I have a memory foam mattress that I used for all of a month before getting my bed back from the narcissist house/toxic environment I fled from, and when I got my bed, I propped the memory foam mattress up against the wall to figure out what to do with it later (it’s practically brand new). And Tommie claimed it quickly. She likes to climb on it and jump off it and sleep on it (it’s vertical against the wall so she can sleep on the “top” side of it. as in the head of it is against the wall and she sleeps on that part…if that makes sense). And I’ll put one of her babies up there with her. and sometimes I wake up, and she’ll have left one of the babies on my chest for when I wake up. Also heart melting. I love Tommie so much. She’s my anchor cat.

Okay I gotta get ready for bed — it’s almost 2am.