Slogging through the season

So, it has been a really tough fall/winter and I am still putting in a lot of conscious effort to avoid truly engaging with my grief, my injuries, my support network, my talents, and really most other aspects of my existence that could encourage healing.

I spent a lot of time surrounded by love and comfort this holiday season and I am sure it helped on some level but for the most part, my pervading compulsions want me to spend significant time motionless and alone. This all sounds way worse than I think it is. I've been really busy and although I just had a pseudo vacation, I spent the majority of it nursing a sprained ankle and feeling intensely unproductive which is really the only time I feel guilty.

A nearly relatable thought/tangent: I have been successful in transforming certain chores into compulsions that control my ability to relax/enjoy(for example: I can't sit down and watch tv if the living room floor isn't swept, the throw blankets and pillows are not in their place, netflix dvds are not stacked neatly, etc.; and, I can't cook if the kitchen is a wreck)but when incapacitated, it just made the living situation hugely irritating as I was unable to compulsively tidy. These compulsions are a self fulfilling blessing and curse: because of them, selected areas of my living quarters are not a complete wreck; because of them I can successfully distract myself from greater, more important work (writing, Tacoma Contemporary, friends, family, community efforts).

Moving on to additional, mildly relatable thoughts: having experienced a lot of forced change, I have been torn to grab the momentum and continue changing or to somehow capture and hoard some stasis (which I know is basically impossible), and I think I have been definitely attempting both simultaneously. I guess I just have to keep it up since the conflicting movements, the progressive and the depressive, seem to be forcing me to think.

It is really hard for me to process loss and this was something that never occurred to me to expect (which I guess is silly). I'm such a control freak and manipulator that I don't think I ever considered that relationships could be ripped from me by forces completely out of my control. And now I have all these stupid dreams where I lose and/or break things; and in real life I accidentally lose and/or break/ruin things all the time. Grief and loss are embarrassing for me. I've been made a fool, clumsy, and out of control. What a mean universe!

I can't wait to be able to walk comfortably again. I need my thinking time: "All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking." - Friedrich Nietzsche