Update on Various in over whelmed...?

Tap…tap, tap, tap. Is this thing on?

Hi! Hiiiiiiii!! I am supposed to be writing my grad school application essay, I have been saying that for six weeks, but I really have to get it done before school starts again on the 14th. Obviously, though I have an urgent need to update here instead, which I haven’t done for over 7 months! How is that possible?? I just read my last entry and really remembered how hard the beginning of this year was. I hadn’t forgotten, Chet and I actually talk about it on a regular basis so we can remember to keep talking lest we return to that undesirable silence, but I had forgotten the heart-piercing, stabby pain in my heart and the constant sense of unease and frustration.

Chet and I have done a lot of work on our relationship and ourselves since I was last here. You know how people keep telling you that relationships are hard work? For years I thought that was stupid and annoying and as it turns out I was wrong. The they often speak the truth and they are right. And it is worth it to do the work. In June I was looking for an apartment for myself, and then I decided that our house was more my house than his and was demanding that he move out and then he went to a thing called The Mankind Project and he returned a different human. Not a different human but a more emotionally present and open human. We have talked a lot, his ability to speak form his deepest darkest places put a mirror to all the things that I unconsciously hide or get defensive about so I have been consistently working on acknowledging those things and shit is working. It is honest and vulnerable and hilarious and fun and adventurous and interesting and fulfilling. We still are only having sex like once a month at most, probably once every three months now that I think of it, so things are certainly not perfect or fully resolved, but they are better than they have ever been in so many ways so I feel confident that that will eventually be resolved also. Or it won’t. I don’t have all the answers.

In the meantime though, Chet has been spending a whole lot of time in therapy and we have both developed a very keen interest in Jung and are finally members at the Jung Society which we had been talking about for 7 years. We are nerds. I love it. There is this man, James Hollis, I picked up a book by him at the thrift store in Marfa in 2012 and it sat on my shelf until I got sober. He is affiliated with the Jung Society and we have seen him lecture there and he is a fucking genius, like literally, I don’t think I have ever been in the presence of that sort of mind before, but anyway what I am trying to say is that it is strange how there are echoes in your life and when you pay attention really cool shit happens.

I have been sober for 23 months and I am ridonculously grateful for it every day. It has affected every single minuscule and massive part of my life. It is pretty gross how emotive I want to get about that. It is also unbelievably wonderful.

I quit smoking 11 months ago, I do yoga every day, I do not eat refined sugar, wheat, dairy or processed food (except in December, when I ate all of those things in massive quantities, it all started with a cookie I got at a sober peer meeting, you cannot give an addict a box of cookies covered in powdered sugar…) I drink at minimum 48 ounces of water a day, and approximately 62 cups of herbal tea, or like a pot.

The very best thing is that I am back in school. I watched the Melissa McCarthy movie last night where she is my age and goes back to school, my experience has not involved as much socializing as hers, or sex with a very very young man. They are more like sweet little boys, I can’t imagine thinking of them sexually or as men. So weird. Anyway, what I am saying is that I am taking a bunch of undergrad courses as a refresher and primer for grad school. Child psychology and counseling. I am going to be the person I needed when I was a child. It is rewarding and satisfying and terrifying and difficult and sometimes (most of the time) I feel a million years old and really lonely but I have recently learned this notion of stick to itness and it pays out big. Last semester I got an A-plus in all of my classes and made one 22-year-old friend!

I have so much more to tell you guys. Mostly that I miss you though. And wish you happy new year. xx