I’m On My Own Today

Apparently, when you answer one of WordPress’s prompts, it remembers. So, even though I answered the prompt when it first came around, I’m not eligible to answer it again. The prompt was “what’s something that most people don’t understand?” If I remember correctly, I wrote an entire essay on how most people don’t understand themselves. How blogging is kind of a superpower that way, especially when you write every day. I understand myself because I go back and look at the entries from the last few days before I write the current one. That way, I can see if what I said then is still true. My mind works very fast, and is a busy place. I’m also not afraid to admit I’m wrong, so a good bit of knowing myself is saying, “Ok. I felt this…. but I don’t feel that anymore…. this is still good…. that can go in the back of the closet, etc.” It is a quilting of my life, because not everything is bad and not everything is good. But in order for me to see perspective with clarity, I have to be brave enough to read my own writing.

That’s the hardest part of blogging, the reading your own writing. Even when what you’ve said is embarrassing, you have to stand next to it because it was all how you felt in that moment, even if you don’t feel that way anymore. Also, processing my feelings about other people makes me feel closer and further away from them, too. When I think about what has happened to me over my life, none of it compares to my reaction at what I’ve allowed. No one affects me more than me, and I have not done things I needed to do to protect myself, and have also done too much. Apparently, I don’t know a whole lot about balance, but I don’t know many neurodivergent people who do.

For instance, yesterday I told The War Daniel that enough time had passed between us and we should start talking again. We agreed that we were assholes to each other. That I hoped he realized that I was never going to abandon him in rehab, and he told me he didn’t feel that way. We’re healing, a day at a time, and I get pictures of “my kids and grandkids,” who are apparently cats, a service dog, and a snake (between The War Daniel and his daughter, Cora). The War Daniel is getting his PhD in English literature, and it’s fun to hear about that project, too.

I realized that if The War Daniel wasn’t brave enough to come to me and say he was an idiot, then it was on me. Because it wasn’t a matter of losing or winning a fight. It was a matter of losing or winning Daniel.

I told him that I’d lived on something Cora said for a year….. “I don’t think your faith in my father is misplaced.” He said it was such a relief. I am not rushing for any specific outcome, I’m just glad to have the big rift healed. We’ll either end up moving in together or we won’t, but that’s not my main goal. My main goal is getting us stable enough to be able to communicate every day without leaving pricks on the other’s skin that won’t heal anymore. I don’t have time for things to fester, because I don’t want to live with that level of insecurity in my life.

So, at the very least, I have solved the most important rift in my life, and that is enough. Two important rifts, if you count the peace I feel after getting Supergrover’s letter and letting her go back to what she’s used to with her own family. I feel like that rift is fixed, because she’s welcome to show up with real feelings just like she did previously, she’s just not welcome to kick the can down the road and make me think we’re fine when we’re not.

I am stronger than that. I can take it. Whatever our real problems are, that’s what I’m built to solve, not to figure out the neurotypical games that come with talking around being anxious/upset/angry.

I’d rather just get back on the same page with someone, even if the writing we’ve previously done is good and we have to scrap some. Daniel and I have a new timeline and a new vision, but I decided that if I was quiet, I was part of the problem.

Now, there is hope where there wasn’t before.

Hope that I didn’t know was there, but had to ask and see.

I promised both you and The War Daniel that I would not give up until he’d been out of rehab a year and his brain wasn’t fuzzy anymore. I kept my word, and I was right. That was the surprise, that I was right. That we’d both been assholes under extreme pressure but it didn’t mean we didn’t love each other.

Other than that, though, nothing changes. He’s in grad school in NE Texas and will be for the foreseeable future, though his classes are online because his tuition assistance also comes through Texas, but once he’s done with school, he’d definitely think about moving here, because he wanted to last year as well. Cora has also said that if Daniel moves here, she wants to come with him because trans laws in Texas are terrible. So, all of these are things that need to be discussed a little bit at a time, while our timeline is long enough not to miss anything.

I have found that Daniel and I are both driven to write, and we need to cut that shit out. For instance, I think we should start video calling at least once a week to FORCE ourselves to stop being writers. This seems like it should be a joke. It’s not. Writer personalities are real and deep.

Supergrover and I have rarely ever gotten out of it, and if the same were to happen with Daniel, I think our relationship would go the same way- not feeling it as secure and real because it’s just text.

I learned the difference with Zac, who sends me pictures of him and Oliver, who leaves voice notes, etc. It helped me get out of my writer personality with him because there were more than just paragraphs to our relationship.

Supergrover doesn’t have time to send me pictures of herself and her dogs on a schedule, nor does she have a committed time for voice notes. The ones I’ve got, though, are priceless. They indeed made me feel close to her in a different way, an added layer. Getting to know the way she talks felt intimate- the mask in front of all her words after I’d internalized them.

Therefore, in online relationships I’m different now. This is not an online relationship because I’ve known The War Daniel since we were seven…. but it’s online now because that’s how we can communicate across states easily. I want voice notes. I want video calls. I want everything to feel as grounded as humanly possible.

So that I do.