chapters in --

I bought a car today.

M commented earlier today: “Do you ever feel like your life is in chapters? I feel like we are entering a new one and I like it.”

I willingly gave my beloved VW Beetle up today in order to secure a crossover SUV that I had chosen to test drive out of all the reading and information-gathering I’d done for months. I decided the moment came. And it went. Now I have a better APR and successfully navigated negotiations in the car-buying process. I never thought I could do something like that. I keep inadvertently proving to myself that I am capable of doing a lot of things. M reminds me sometimes that I moved all my stuff into my apartment in a winter storm because the movers cancelled. He’s right. I marvel at my own resilience and resourcefulness, no matter how ordinary it might be.

I think gratitude is one of the essential components of living a good life. Not only for material and physical things, but the immaterial too: gratitude for self, for the bits and pieces of who I am and this very specific way that I’ve gotten to exist in the world so far. I am starting to actually enjoy it sometimes.

I remember (not even all that long ago) when I had so much self-loathing and forlorness that it just felt like it was part of who I was as a person. But these feelings feel so unfamiliar now. I don’t frame my life from this perspective anymore. I feel a lot less alien. I feel less like an outside observer. I am more at peace. It still feels uncomfortable sometimes, but I imagine it always will in some capacity. I think a large part of this shift is because I have been working towards removing some of the external stressors that I could, and also one very simple thing: having a secure relationship. Not that these things must be romantic, but the most prominent one in my life is.

It is a disorienting, confusing, and painful process to navigate life without having healthy romantic and family relationships and interactions to refer to when you’re building your framework for that as a kid. Vulnerability is a threat to survival, rather than something you learn to work with when it’s called for. It’s easy to get a lot of it wrong and have to try mitigate injury, and start over. Repeatedly. It is trial-and-[so much] error. So now that I do have that in my life, it feels like an absolute gift. I want to take really good care of it, water it, give it some light.

I’ve noticed the positive interactions and security from it have had effects in nearly every aspect of how I think and interact with things everyday. I never realized how vital secure and healthy relationships are for people - of course, I read about brain development in psychology classes and education classes and how impactful secure relationships are for health and development, but it’s easier to understand abstract concepts than how they apply to your own life. It makes me wonder how much in my life would be different had I had these kinds of relationships sooner. I accept that I can’t change any of that, I don’t have resentment or anxiety over it. It’s just a hypothetical to me.

The most perplexing and astonishing part of all of this is how completely accidental and inadvertent it has been. It makes me anxious that sometimes, for some people, it doesn’t happen this way because we don’t know how to navigate most of it. Social situations, dating, all of it feel so much more daunting. I don’t know why, but I feel mild guilt in some ways. I think this is just the trauma response of my brain. I’m learning to quiet some of that. It takes time.

So, in a very roundabout way, love helps light my own way to guide myself in positive directions. I am capable of doing that on my own, of course, but love doesn’t mean dependency - it just makes the harder and scarier stuff feel easier, like a brain buffer (along with more sleep, which I’ve also been getting more of).

My next goal is moving, although I’m so very tired of moving and all that entails. I know I’ll get through it, like I have with everything else.

Time slips away faster than I want it to these days. My favorite season is in full swing, I am grateful. I think this is the begining of my favorite chapter.

Last updated June 13, 2021