introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K

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the last day to myself

the last day - 12 october 2014

"you kept a distance out of fear you'd break but what good's a single wind chime, hanging quiet all alone? the music our collisions would make is a sound that turns the road-that-leads-us-back-home into Home...oh, the music our collisions would make."~mewithoutYou

today is the last day before everything changes. i'm thankful for the sunshine and the reprieve from my sullen mood these last weeks. when my hands are busy, i don't have too much time to think of the things that come into my head when i'm still.

the last few weeks at work have been some of the most challenging i've ever encountered and i come home ragged and raw, questioning how much longer i can do this some nights. i come up with excuses for america's callousness and i get the sense that i'm only enabling behaviors...but isn't that what i'm getting paid to do? grown ass adults and their first world problems seem less and less important to me. it's the economy, stupid.

friday night, after hours on the phone with a woman who couldn't follow logic for more than a second--partly due to what i sensed was either intoxication, a head wound, or possibly both--i issued a ridiculously huge and undeserved credit and headed home, defeated. a year ago, i would have stayed the course until sunrise. i don't have the stamina anymore. i'm committed to the company for 2 years and i'll see this commitment through as with any that i've made before. i can't help but think of something better. of what comes next. this thinking, though, will better serve me down the road. for now, one day at a time is the mantra. right now, i've got to get through this before i start running towards any particular light. while that particular woman whined choruses of "it isn't faaaaaaair" (yes, actually, it was, ma'am) i addressed the messages that came to my phone here and there.

i have unplugged and locked down nearly everything from the phone and started turning off the volume completely. things are quieter this way and i'm slowly unlearning the weird electrochemical process that causes my neurons to fire unwanted messages at itself at the blink of the green light, the ding of the cash register bell indicating yet. another. message. slowly, i've stopped waiting for the messages to come, stopped hoping for them. hoping for them was, essentially, hoping for him. there is a slight sadness to it, too...but like i said...i was pavlov's dog and all the drool for the incoming messages to validate what? i don't even remember. it was foreign to me to get so many messages and addictive, too, i suppose. occasionally, i still hear the ding from a teammate's phone and i half expect it's my own and check...which makes me a little frustrated because i don't want this in my brain anymore...as though removing this particular process from my brain will seep into my heart, too...because that's really where i need the work, admittedly.

"how is baby action?"

i'm so unsure what to even say. i'm perhaps slightly guarded and careful, unsure of how to answer a question like this now. the coming baby was part of the reason he withdrew in the first place so i feel less inclined to discuss it at all to make things easier, anyway. i find it even more difficult to field messages of 'i miss you' and 'i think about you more than i should.'

that last one is particularly difficult. texting is too difficult a medium for me to really understand in any visceral way. should i take this to mean that i'm missed or that i'm another thing he's trying to simplify (eradicate?) from the day to day? it wasn't something i could discuss while i was working and i joked it off a little. what happened to taking things at face value? that's how i've tried to be...but my own face-value is a reflection of those same thoughts.

in either case, i'm as okay as i would have been all those months ago when i struggled with when to tell him in the first place. ultimately, i respond only to state the case. i'm still here (true) and i'm trying to give him space (also true.) i'm a patient enough lady and have exactly zero expectations. and i have nothing to stop me from waiting-without-waiting for now. eventually, though, my heart stops with it's circling and waiting and moves on from it's holding flight pattern. my heart is sad sometimes but i've learned enough about myself over these last years to know better than to let it paralyze me. instead, i compartmentalize. eventually, there will be someone who knows how to pick the lock to my robot heart and when it happens, it will happen. as ever, i am in no rush. there is plenty to do to keep my head and heart busy.


i spent saturday with myself and my dog because i had to. i needed to get rid of the weight of the previous week. the difficult puzzles that needed solving, the weighing of all the variables coupled with the insults and adults screaming. it was really the thing that weighed me down this week and i needed to get rid of it fast. i stopped off at my laptop and disabled my facebook indefinitely again like i'd planned and immediately shut my computer off, refusing to spend the day in front of the screen.

i got out some of my fall and winter clothes and found pants (pants!!!) that fit me. they were way too big when i bought them years and years ago but they were 2$ and i figured i'd have them taken in but never did. they turned out to be roomy and comfortable enough at those weekend retreats spent cross-legged in meditation at the forest monastery. they were warm enough to keep me from freezing on the pre-dawn walks from my kuti hut to the main lodge and thin enough to be comfortable even for winter sunrise meditations where the heat in main building was from a raging wood-fire stove that did it's diligence and then some. i take a little comfort that they fit me now--larger than me-at-my-most-large for just a little bit longer. these are the pants i wore on some pretty incredible singular journeys. i was able to see inside myself in a way that i never did. they brought my thoughts to a peaceful place when i pulled them on, recalling how i felt after those visits. it was a tiny happy comfortable victory. i have fucking missed wearing pants, guys.

sam and i spent the late afternoon in the woods. we met another--or possibly the same--porcupine in the last leg of our loop. as the sky darkened, we watched him eat grass or leaves or whatever he was chewing on and then went on our way again. the squirrels, who have been rather quiet and blended in well with the woods all summer, are more active and crazy and noticeable as they jump through the dried leaves and pine needles that carpet the forest floor and trails. yesterday was the first time i noticed that the white birch trees seem to have been planted along the main trails, perhaps for this reason...when the leaves cover the trail, it would be easy to get lost but one could follow the birch and find the way, i think.

we came home in the cold. i finally closed tight my windows for the first time since i opened them in the spring. i turned on the stove and we enjoyed our first fire of the season. this place gets super cozy when that thing is going and i know that, for the first time since i lived on my own when i was 18, i will be warm enough this winter. i'm thankful for the heat being included with the rent so that i can worry less about keeping it turned poverty-low and layering up on sweaters and hats and socks even inside. i found the pens game playing on the nhl network and settled in to watch the game alone. it was the best date night i've had in awhile...i could practically feel nick and tom with me, ghosts of winters past. i don't recognize the names of the new players yet and my eyes darted to follow the puck, rusty after a few too many winters with a man who was simply uninterested in sports. this is not to say that i'm a fanatic...but something about hockey makes me enjoy the winter. i don't have to actively watch the game to enjoy it, either...just hearing it, the announcers, the phrases, the sound of the skates on the ice and the players jamming against the walls of the rink is enough. hockey, within earshot, is comforting. i left the heat on through the night and slept snuggled up under my summer-weight down comforter and cotton sheets. i woke only when the stove turned on and off, a new sound and a flickering light from the fire casting shadows through the bedroom door on the walls of my bedroom. i slept soundly.

my parents arrive tomorrow evening. the days of the house to myself are over, possibly for forever. i am thankful for the time i've had here. it was all the alone time i was wanting just this time last year when i was like a butcher carving out scrap hours for myself whenever i could. i am glad my parents are coming because i am a little overwhelmed with what needs to be done and in how short a timeframe. the baby could, realistically, come at any time now. today, it is lovely and sunny and the sun is already late in the sky. it gets so dark here so early. i've got a list of chores to do today to get ready for them to arrive but i'm reminding myself that my parents are coming to help and to have a little bit more of a vacation for themselves. it doesn't have to be perfect. i'm letting myself off the hook a little...but still, jones...no sense letting them in on the fact that their daughter lives like a bachelor when she lives alone. dishes, laundry, straightening up, making up the guest bed. something tells me i'll sleep pretty well tonight, too.

my mind feels more clear than it has in weeks and i'm thankful for the long walk in the woods yesterday that made it possible. the unplugging is helping, too...as it always does. when i can sort through and find the simplicity in things, i am most happy and productive. i'm getting there again.

xo,
jones

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.what came before. - .what happened next.

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