Thursday and Starting Early (1 of likely more) in Book Five: Working Through the Maze 2018

Started at 2140 on Wednesday.

So… yeah. I’m not looking for reasons to complain about my wife and I’m not looking for ways that things aren’t great… but sometimes they just jump out.

Our family Christmas Contest finally announced a winner. Our typical thing is “Announce Gift Themes, Announce who buys for who, gifts are given and pictures are uploaded, then “best gift in theme” is voted upon and the individual that gave that gift is named as the winner.” My brother was in charge this year so… it took THIS long for him to post the poll and announce the winner.

Anyway, that got Wife and I talking. You see, Wife has a gift at gift giving… when she cares. The first two times she participated in the Family Christmas Contest, she won. In landslide victories. She is the only woman that can give my dad presents as she is the only one that can consistently hit the ball out of the ballpark on “awesome gifts for the man who is impossible to buy for.” However, when it comes to the Cousin Family Christmas Contest… if you win, that means you are responsible for set up the next year. After two years of that, she decided that was too much work. So, she’s been “pulling her punches” on gift giving to make sure she didn’t win again. Don’t worry, she didn’t win this time.

To continue this better, I want to remark a little bit on what Wife’s therapist Kayla has said needs to be worked on. According to Kayla, my wife is incapable of having any kind of faith in herself. In short, Wife is cripplingly self-focused because she is always afraid of her own failure. Thus why her anxiety can destroy her when it crops up.

So, back to the Cousin Christmas Contest. Wife is amazing at many things when she chooses to be. FOR instance like with Gifts. And I told her this. I was supporting her using real life examples. I told her that I have seen her surpass all expectations when she puts her mind to something and actually cares… which is why I believe in her and why she should believe in herself. Which made me think, Y’know what, I should show her that Soul Eater episode. I want her input. That… was my mistake.

As the episode played, there were two things I was considering/noticing.
(1) Crona really is a good character for me to point to in my struggles. Ragnarok, his weapon, is depicted as a small man coming out of his back… Ragnarok is always hitting, belittling, criticizing, and being mean to Crona. A perfect depiction of what it can feel like for me… always having a second voice/perspective questioning what you do, say, think, or feel… always beating you up for not being what you “should be”.
(2) Because I’m constantly questioning my own actions, I was wondering if I was being like Thompson. She’s the ex that “signaled to me” that I should ask her out by playing “Before the Night Is Over” by Gaelic Storm on repeat one night. Ultimately, I realized that I was not acting like Thompson for one specific difference. When Thompson put that song on (and played it on repeat) she just sat there, hoping I would understand the significance she was putting on playing that song. Whereas in my case, I put the episode on and was literally telling Wife why showing her this episode was significant to me and what part I wanted her to pay closest attention to. So… not Thompson because I didn’t “hope she got the meaning” but was merely using the Anime Episode to highlight and underline what I was trying to say.

But even still? I’m an idiot. Telling Wife why I wanted her to see the episode, specifically calling out the character of Crona, explicitly saying “What Maka says to him here is the reason I wanted you to watch this.”.... none of it mattered. Wife just kind of watched it a little while she was watching YouTube videos on her phone (despite my asking her to watch what I was showing her/saying to her) and shrugged her shoulders after it was all over. No follow up, no discussion, no support like the kind I gave her. Just a “Oh, that’s how you feel. Kay.” It was… a bit upsetting.

In other news.... I have been letting myself down in the writing field significantly. My “narrative therapy” or “Holy shit this is long!” entry hasn’t been worked on much in the last week or so. Everything leading up to my relationship with Wife was easy to write. Now that I’m dealing with what led to my first attempt to break up with her… and the subsequent years afterwards including marriage and struggle… it is proving a bit more difficult to write.
Likewise, my erotic stories and Draft Entries purge has stalled. I’m currently working on an entry that was so clear to me when I had the idea… but that was many years ago. And as my imagination remains the most pleasurable and freeing expression of sexuality available to me… I’d like to finish that. Though, truly, I’d like to finish all of it. It is my fond wish that I catch up on all current “pending writing” before I return to work. As I don’t much care if I get the job I’m interviewing for today… and very much care if I get the job I’m interviewing for next week… perhaps my interview on the 17th should act as a “pressure deadline.”

Loud roar!
Icy Hot, Tiger Balm, Meditation, Alcohol… I’ve tried everything available to me to go to sleep and yet the pain in my legs and back persist and prevent me from getting sleep. This is both irritating and unpleasant. When people hear about the Fibromyalgia, they feel bad because of the constant pain.... but the constant pain has allowed me to understand and speak the truth of humanity. The human spirit is capable of adapting to anything, provided it remains constant. A specific level of pain felt forever? The human body can adapt. But the random “volts” or “shocks” of extreme pain? That is something that can’t be adapted to as those particular pains are intermittent at best. The hum of pain that becomes my background… easy. The stabbing pain that is my present? Difficult. Here’s where it is funny. The current pain? A combination of exercise, sleeplessness, and alcohol. But otherwise? I’d still be up. The pain would persist in a different form. Because of my exercise, sleeplessness, and alcohol… my pain is extreme and located explicitly and exclusively in my right foot, right thigh, and entire back. Without the exercise and alcohol… the sleeplessness is on a randomizer. Maybe I sleep, maybe I don’t. But the interesting thing? The exercise focuses the pain. It is more severe. It is more brutal. But it is isolated. Specific. Contained. Extreme but limited. Without the exercise? It would be more widespread. So therein lies the conflict. A dull pain coursing through the entire body or a specific pain assailing a specific part of the body? That is my “would you rather?” of life. Pain of a category 4 all over the body; or pain of a category 8 in a specific area?