Vitriolic Fear Based Rant

For the first time in a long time, I'm sitting in an empty, quiet house in the evening with no expectation of company. Mr. H has left for a three day hiking trip into the mountains, and I have no one to "keep it together" for. I'm surprised at how close I am to tears. I started work again, and after months of waiting for a short sale everything happened this week and we move in on the 30th. That's roughly two weeks to pack the house, clean one house, move, and start cleaning another house. I think i could handle all of that just fine, except...

I'm in the Schrodinger's Box phase of my cycle, also known as the luteal phase. For those of you playing along at home, that's the two weeks between ovulation and menstruation when you could be pregnant but don't know yet. This. is. tearing. me. apart.

This is the first cycle after my first period after my miscarriage. I've been pregnant three times. All of them died. My hands are shaking because I'm terrified. If I'm not pregnant, I'm worried it will be another Frigg-knows-how-long before I do. If I am pregnant, I'm terrified this will end like all the others.

I don't generally let on how much this bothers me. People feel bad and want to help but there's nothing they can do and all their suggestions sound like "the reason you fail at this is because..."

That drove me fucking mad the last time. I had some very well meaning but clueless people try to "help". My yoga teacher kept offering to teach me the "fertility series" which is a set that needs ot be done regularly, like clockwork. I told her that I would really mean to, but I just don't start new habits very easily and it wasn't the appropriate solution for me, but thank you. She offered over, and over, and over again until I asked her to please stop. She didn't know what else to do so she had one thing and used it every time until it felt like judgement. There's no scientific evidence this series helps, she doesn't know what's going on with my system, there's no guarantee this would help and it would just be one more thing that didn't work.

Also, I'm a fucking adult and fully capable of asking for help when I need it and knowing what's appropriate for me and not, and so stop telling me what I should do. This was the same person who, after my last miscarriage before I'd even stopped bleeding, was excitedly showing off her new hand-me-down baby clothes for her pregnancy. "isn't this cute? look at this one. Aww, this is adorable!" As I stand there and smile with dead baby dripping into my maxi pad. While I'm happy for you in the long run and this is a joyous occasion and whatnot would it fucking kill people to think for a second and maybe guess that this isn't appropriate?

I see people treating their kids like shit and i want to scream. I can't even look at "cute kid" photo collections anymore. Every time there's a baby on the bus I have to be careful how much i smile at them because I'm sure I'd start to lose it and freak them out.

I'm not "baby crazy", i'm not responding to my biological clock ticking and suddenly oh, hey, I want to do this now. This is *all* I've wanted to do. All of the work I've done on sorting my shit out, all of my education, all of my life to this point has been living a full and educational life so that I can be the best parent I can and make contentiousness, puzzle-solving, curious, accountable people. I want to get my house set up with kids, and once the last one's able to totter and ask for things, I want to take in foster kids like we had when we were little. I want to create a safe space for everyone and shelter at least a few from the fucked up system.

The idea that I might not be able to birth children is too big for me to even contemplate right now. Save your platitudes, I know "there's always adoption". I'm not fucking stupid. And by the way, don't *ever* say that to someone. All it shows is how grossly you've missed the point, how disconnected you are from what's going on and what an asshole you are. Someone in this situation doesn't need advice I can pick up from bus adverts. If that's all you have to say, shut the fuck up. People in rough emotional situations need you to *be there with them*, they don't need fucking advice and pithy statements. Just shut up, give them a hug if they want it and sit next to them quietly if you want to help. Don't expect anything, don't try to engage conversation that's not forthcoming. The person you are trying to help should not feel like they have to entertain you or make you feel comfortable. This goes double for funerals. Learn how to be a person, not a sound bite.

I'm worried I'll get more disconnected with each failed pregnancy. I'm worried that my failure to get really excited is what causes them to fail, like maybe i'm not channeling the energy right or something. the last one had a strong, clear heartbeat. two days later it was in my hands. I don't know what to do but go forward. I pretend that everything's fine because people don't know how to react so they wind up costing me more energy to reassure them or politely grin through their "help" than it's worth. I feel like a river of lava running under a thin shell of rock and I don't know if that rock is going to thicken and cool or break through. My courage is screwed to the sticking place, but the sticking place is starting to crack.

Letter to management.

I’ve observed a few times now that S. has made a point to highlight the dissolution of the entire team or firing of individuals if we fail to produce good quality work. This needs to stop. It didn’t work with the old team and this team is scarcely two months old and is already showing signs of breaking down. One of the reasons the last team did wind so far off was the building fatalistic attitude that caused a “we’re already dead in the water, why do we care” mentality and the results of that were not pretty.

Threats work when you need oars pulled or rocks smashed. We work at a business. It is a given in the business world that liabilities get cut. Unless this is a done deal and you’re announcing severance, this threat is not what judges get paid to deal with, and it is *exactly* the wrong thing to do to get the results you want. Reminding people on a regular basis that their jobs are at stake is not just hurting their feelings, it is threatening their resources, their money, their food, their house. The same parts of our brain that respond to a bear attack also respond to social danger, including the loss of a job.

When in danger, blood flows away from the cortex, the thinking part of the brain and flows to the amygdala and brain stem, triggering emotional response and automatic functions, respectively. When a person is threatened the “fight or flight” response is activated. Blood flows away from digestive organs and higher brain function to the heart, lungs and limbs, adrenaline is released and the body gets ready for an intensely physical reaction. In the modern business world, this is inappropriate, so people sit there with these stress and anger chemicals running through them, indigestion and they start to take it out on each other. The unconscious part of the brain says “I feel a threat, you’re in the room, you must be it.” This starts the bickering, the refusing to see other perspectives, territorial behavior and attempts at forceful group dominance. This has happened before and it is happening now.

People *cannot* be creative and cooperative the way you need us to be when they are anxious about survival in this context. We are hardwired like this so the species didn’t sit around pondering the nature of the universe when there were wolves at the door. We are a species that prizes immediate self-preservation over Descartes. If you want rational, reasonable people who can cooperate, they need to feel it is safe to be wrong, to listen to what others have to say and to find solutions that solve the problems of judging, not the problems of ego or survival. I cannot do my job well if the people with whom I am supposed to hold intelligent discourse are terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. The only worse way to “motivate” the team would be to threaten physical harm. People respond to danger with physical action, verbally defending their territory at all costs or by shutting down and backing out. None of these is useful to (the company).

People respond creatively and constructively to confident leadership, confidence in the validity of their contribution to the team and a neutral-to-safe workplace.

Sincerely,

Delta Hranek

Dead babies aren't much fun.

Two chemical pregnancies, two miscarriages. Each one gets a little farther in the process, this last one had a strong heartbeat, 150 bpm three days before I cramped up badly and passed a little foetus. We went the emergency room, again, because the books and the internets tell you to go to the ER if you experience XYZ. I think I'm done with that now. My husband is a nurse, I'm no simpleton, I'm not going to the ER unless it's an emergency anymore. They were condescending, probably because they see that sort of thing all the time. A nurse came in to tell us she was covering for another nurse on her break, she was the first person we'd spoken to.

The Doc kept saying things like "so you think you've had a miscarriage" "so you passed a clot?" No, I don't think I had a miscarriage, I did have one. My uterus went "squeeze" and my nerves went "ow" and the in-tact, multi-colored and textured capsule of dead baby went "splot" in my underpants. I held it for a while, showed it to my husband (the nurse) we consulted his maternity nursing text book, the one the nurse who hasn't bothered to check in yet also read, and now we're here because it's procedure. The reason I'm not freaking out or a big mess is that I don't tend to have big emotional reactions in front of people I don't know, and the bigger something is, the less you'll know about it because I play the important cards closer to the breast. So fuck you, I'm here because I'm supposed to be even though I don't want to be and really don't need to be. You have a problem with that? Take it up with the other doctors who write this shit.

I said that on the inside, later. At the time I was too tired and getting kind of pissed that clever coherent rants were hard to come by. The next day I went to my already scheduled primary care appt., originally to check my thyroid (turns out it's fine, pregnancy just makes it do more) and for the first time since I got pregnant I had a health care person in front of me who wasn't insulting or a noob. The midwife clinic I went to had students doing most of the hands on stuff, two weeks later my arms are *still* bruised where they tried to draw blood. We took another reading with a frightfully efficient phlebotamist whom I complimented on the best draw I'd had in weeks.

Went home, cramped some more, passed the placenta, put it in the freezer next to the baby while I rested enough to build a boat out of foil and plaster so Peter and I could have a viking funeral. The next day or the one after, we took lots of cedar sticks and made a pyre on the boat, then put the boat into this vessle with some water in the backyard. A few rose petals and salvia flowers on the grass made it pretty and we sent the little one along into the smoke and air.

I laid low for a while because the attention was a little overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to have the reaction people expect and it's always a little awkward when I don't. Ya, I'm bummed that didn't work out, but I'd suspected something for a while. Even the heartbeat didn't convince me that the spotting was completely innocent. So when someone was like "oh my god I'm so sorry, how sad for you" it was like "well, yes, that sucked but I'm pretty over it now. I still have moments where I wish it would have worked out, but these things all happen for a reason, it'll work when it's time, in the meantime I've got stuff to do"

It was one of the few moments that I have ever actually hated my body. I don't care if my ass is big, I can do something about that if I really wanted to. But this whole "not supporting life" thing is starting to grate. I'll give it one more try before we go in and start testing for non-obvious reasons, as everything seems to look fine inside and out. I'm better now, I don't have the constitution for a serious grudge, I get that things weren't right, that when the guys upstairs get their acts in order and someone's ready to make a go of it, it'll match up.

The hardest part has been remembering that I have to heal at the speed of chemistry. That just because I'm rationally ok with things, the hormones still have to sort themselves out and find their level again. Just as I was starting to get some of my energy back I was hit with a wave of depression that was more annoying than anything else. I wasn't sad, I was depressed, the muting and absence of sensation and feeling. I had no motivation and didn't care about it. It took a while for that to pass and it was an interesting reminder that my body will do things at its own pace and it doesn't really care what I have to do today.

I've never really wallowed in feeling down, I don't really get people who do. I start thinking about the things I can do now that the timetable has been reset and it's not all bad. There were a few things I was hoping to get to before I got pregnant and now I've got another month at least before we start trying again. I may be able to lift boxes when we move, I won't have a fresh infant on my hip while feeding pros at NWC next year (though I may be a hippo), and I don't have to cut my MSFT contract short yet. I'll also be able to go to Critical Massive and not worry about people using my cooler or making some of the adjustments that go along with camping for a week while pregnant.

Yes, I find silver linings if i have to hunt them down and nail them on. Finding good in bad and not living in yesterday is how we survived growing up. I'm not entirely convinced it's not still a useful coping mechanism, especially when I'm taking time to honor and acknowledge the bad and then move on. "Nope that didn't happen" has issues. "Yup, that happened and it sucked, what's next?" seems fine to me. Though it does still smart when my other pg friend shows off her baby clothes that are so adorable. I'm only human.

Sometimes, I miss the people in my head.

People who run in philosophic circles sometimes make a big deal out of the question of whether we actually _know_ anything in the world beyond our own perception of it. People you know? Places you're familiar with? They're all just constructs in your mind, even your senses aren't reliable. After a fashion, they're right. It's important not to go too far down this rabbit hole or you may wind up spending years in coffee shops waxing intellectual about the futility of it all until someone kicks you out of your apartment and you realize you should get a job. At some point in your early 20s you should come to the conclusion that whether you're a person or a butterfly dreaming you're a person or a construct in the Matrix, whatever reality may actually be the one you're in requires food and shelter.

Still, it's not entirely a bad idea. We never really know another person, partly because they're so complex. To really know them you'd have to have access to every moment in their lives, first person data on how that affected them and then keep track of every moment of the present as well, including your experiences and how you're affecting them and that just can't be done. We see what people show us. Sometimes we can nudge in around the edges, but that's still pretty much seeing what they show us albeit unintentionally. It's kind of like when someone's pants are unzipped or have tucked their skirt into their underwear.

Every now and again, I'll see something that reminds me of someone I was once fond of. Train tracks are what are doing it for me now, especially the set that Amtrak uses. I think I miss the person I used to ride them to see, but really I miss the version in my head. I miss who he was at the very beginning when everything was promises and potential and neither of us knew where we fit so it could have been anywhere. Anywhere is a really exciting prospect, especially when you've got some ideas and some things you're looking for and they've read the brochure and the *seemed* like they were on board. Sometimes they even are, since the brochure is all they've got to go on and the picture in their head seems just as exciting as the picture in your head so Hell Yes, let's do this thing! It's called New Relationship Energy and it's Nature's way of getting us to breed before we come to our senses. Clever bitch.

Because then you start trying things out and no matter how hard you try it becomes apparent that the picture in your head and the picture in theirs isn't quite the same. Words and ideas get translated differently, your dictionaries aren't the same and the shine begins to show spots of tarnish. Sometimes there's enough solid ground to form a lasting relationship. Sometimes the people you are when you've come to your senses get along pretty well and you figure out where you fit and things are peachy. Sometimes you realize that you didn't really know the person at all and who you are together when you're not trying to impress each other just isn't working out. At times like those I feel like I've got two different people inside my head, the person I wanted them to be and the person they turned out to be. I miss the person I wanted him to be, the person he tried to be but couldn't. I miss the feeling I had when I still had complete faith in his brochure, in his promised potential.

But alas, it turns out all people are people. It turns out that everyone has somewhere they need to go, some things they need to do and a way they need to do it that makes sense for them, and often times those brief mirages of potential were more to tell us about ourselves than someone else. Assuming you're playing fairly they're getting something out of it too, and if you're not playing fairly and they don't tell you to fuck off...well, both of you have issues and I'm not interested in getting in the middle of them.

I know we can't go back, I know we have to learn and move on and have new experiences and make room for the future. I'm not even entirely sure what it is I miss. Maybe it's just a feeling in myself that focused on you but didn't originate there. I wonder if I can create it again, but this time without needing you. I wonder if that was just practice, like training wheels to show me it could be done and what it feels like so i can find that space in myself again and meditate there, find the power in it and figure out where to fit it in the rest of my life. Now that I think about it, there's really no reason not to be as excited and romantically curious about my own future as I was about a shared one.

Teachers sometimes come in the strangest ways....

My Husband is an Honorable Man

Something has been bugging me of late. It's always kind of bugged me, but it seems I'm either picking up on it more now or I'm hanging around more married people so it comes up more.

When two (or more) adult live in close proximity for any amount of time, they are going to get on each other's nerves from time to time. It's unavoidable, no matter how well you match up with someone, there will be the odd corner or two that is not complimentarily shaped and lo! friction. Sometimes you'll bitch to your friends about how your partner is doing this thing that drives you bonkers, and that's fine, so long as certain guidelines are followed. Generally I try to have those venting conversations 1-1 in privacy with someone who understands that I'm frustrated and this isn't to be repeated or taken as a measure of my partner's quality. We're crazy monkeys, stuff happens.

The bit that's been driving me crazy of late is when people talk down to or about their partners in public, or private mixed company. This goes from the little old lady at the fruitstand who chides "oh men, they can't do anything by themselves" to the "casual" comments at social gatherings about how the husband used to be messy when he was a batchelor, how he doesn't earn the lion's share of the income, how sometimes it feels like he's one of the kids one has to deal with. I try to be polite and either dodge the premise of the question or, as in the case with the fruitstand lady say something neutral so we can GTFO, but this is my blog, and it's time to say this.

Fuck.

That.

Shit.

Are you kidding me? Look, I understand the frustrations that can build up in any relationship and the tendency to want to "get a bit of your own back" and sometimes it feels like the only way you can do that is to be passive aggressive in public by showing the world what a doof your husband is and how great his life is now that you're in it but seriously, shut the fuck up. It makes you look like a complete ass. If your partner talked that way about you, you'd tear him a new one and if you were super polite you'd wait until you were in private to do it. Otherwise you'd have a fit right there and make everyone around you as uncomfortable as you are for the sake of your emotional outburst.

The next time you feel the urge to say something negative about your partner in public, bite your tongue and think about this: he puts up with your shit. All of your crazy, all of your demands, all of your insistence on changing the way he sees the world, the way he talks to you, the way he lives in his own home, the way he spends his time and how he shows you he loves you are things you've influenced and he swallows all of it because he's crazy about you. If you feel frustrated that he's not meeting some need, ask yourself, "have I ever actually *said* this to him out loud? Do I just assume that because he loves me he'll know what I mean to say?"

If the answer is Yes, you have some work to do. Expecting someone else to interpret your clues because you don't feel comfortable saying what you mean out loud is total bullshit. You're telling that person that your needs to not feel a little awkward are so important that they need to run their own lives, and spend extra attention on figuring out what you want. And you can do that, but the odds they'll get it right are slim, and all the energy they spend trying to figure out your cryptic clues could be spent on the two of you being happy together.

And don't think that just because you've made your needs clearly and plainly known means you're off the hook. You're not on a goddamn pedestal, he doesn't exist to serve you in whatever way you think is appropriate at any given time. He's a person, he has needs too. When is the last time you asked him what he needs, what he feels, what he thinks could be going better.

"Oh, men don't talk about their feelings"

Bullshit. They may not wax poetic and go on about it for hours, they may not chatter on as a form of bonding, but any man who's even remotely self aware knows when you piss him off, when you're being an unbearable ass and has an idea or two of things he'd like to change. If he says "fine" it's because you haven't created a space where he feels like he can actually talk and be heard without being shut down or criticized. If you have a knee jerk reaction to something he says, assume he means something else, have ever accused him of an off "tone"...those are in your head. Any meaning you put on someone else's words beyond what they say is your own internal dialog. Those are *your* emotional reactions to things you * perceive* and you, as an adult, are responsible for checking your emotional response, taking a break if you need one, until you can address the content of the conversation for what it is and not what your projections are.

If something in your relationship isn't working, it's 50% your fault. You can work on it together, you can explore the things you both need to do to change how you approach something. Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes there's just no way to reach the middle ground. Sometimes that 50% both of you have are just different needs/offers and the relationship changes because what you need is not compatible. It happens, you grow, you change, you realize you built something up that wasn't there, you wanted something so badly you tried to make it what is wasn't. That's fine. It happens. It hurts. But you can be graceful about it, like a grown-up.

Your husband isn't a fucking child, stop treating him like one. Your husband is man, a grown-up, a person who deserves respect and kindness and for you to go out of your way to give him some of what he needs. Think about whether he's had sleep, whether he's in a conversational mood, think about all the things you want him to consider before bringing something to you before you unload whatever rant about him or someone else loose. Sometimes they don't want to hear it. Sometimes they don't want to hear it *right then* and because their needs are just as important as yours are, that means you have to fucking wait. You're an adult, you can do it.

My husband and I have had our share of disagreements, we've had the odd shouting match. We've both had a lot of growing to do to learn to trust each other. Part of that was him learning that his home is a safe space, that it's ok to tell me what he needs and wants and won't be accused of manipulating me (thanks angry, childish stepfather). A big part of that was me learning that I do some pretty messed up stuff too. I have a hypersensitive reaction to anger so I tend to try to shut it down, to explain how it's not my fault, to lean into the tiller until the conversation steers in my favor. This was a perfectly useful tactic when I was in a house with a crazy angry person who could escalate at the drop of a hat with her own internal monologue guiding the storm. It's a very *bad* tactic when you're not in a house with an abusive nutcase and are talking to a person you actually like who would like to feel like I listen to him once in a while without showing him (with citations) how he's wrong.

Maybe this is a key. I don't just love my husband, I *like* him. He's a person I like, and I want to treat him well. When he tells me I'm doing something that makes him feel bad, I may feel defensive or under attack, but those are reactions that have to do with the past, not the present. So I take a breath and do my best to let my rational reasonable mind take the lead, and if I fail, I come back to it until I get it right. I make mistakes, that's ok. I work to fix them. If you don't feel like you ever make mistakes, that you're a great wife and mother and the problem is all other people....I have a rude awakening for you.

If you *don't* like your partner, what the hell are you still doing with them?

How to cock-up a perfectly good relationship with unreasonable expectations of everyone involved: yet another tale of smouldering bridges and ponies.

I love shiny things. And fun things. And super awesome adventures. And stories. And stories *about* super awesome shiny adventures! I especially love story time when I have something new and shiny and think about all the fun adventures we could have and all the places we could go and the things we can see and plot and plan and build castles in the sky.

Aaaand ya, I kind of get carried away.

What, me? The very picture of moderation and restraint? It would seem there's a fine line between story time and getting all up in Future Me's business causing hell. See, I have this vision of where I want to be in the future, what kind of family I want and the kinds of people I want around me. Sometimes when I find someone who is interested a little group storytelling, we go back and forth for a while and I lay down the whole epic saga. Even though it seems shiny and awesome, it seems this can be a little daunting. I'm coming to find that not everyone has their own shiny epic plotted out to compare notes right off the bat. And getting the whole thing at once, or even in increments at the beginning can cause a sort of "deer in the headlights" moment that I seem to mistake for plotting. Sometimes when I hear something neat, I sometimes kind of zone out lightly as I figure out how to make it work. It would seem that when other people hear something big and zone out, it can be because they're a little overwhelmed but I seem so excited that they don't want to kill the mood but damn could I slow down a little?

The deeper I dig into my head, the further the rabbit hole seems to go. Every time I feel like I have a handle on things and finally manage to peel back that last paper-thin film of crazy to uncover what I hope is finally some sense of "there", I discover that it's just another layer of crazy-onion, and there's so much more to go. I keep wondering when I'm going to get it right, and then I remember that it's all a work in progress and that I can only do what I do because Past Me didn't know what I know now, she was working on other things. Future Me, on the other hand, I'm sure is getting really tired of me trying to upstage her and Bogart her gig. I keep wanting the whole shiny story now and loose track of what's right in front of me. And when I'm caught up in the story, everything that happens now has repercussions that I weigh against the the whole future story and start pouting when I won't get the pony I don't even have yet. Sometimes I'm like NASA planning a shuttle launch, all careful and cautious and covering all the angles. Sometimes, especially it seems when it involves people I like, I become Johnny Awesome on a quest all "the arrow points that way, onward!" (later) "What exposition? You mean I was supposed to *read* too?". It's like a freaking five year old built my psyche out of bubblegum and glitter....oh, wait.

Where things have been getting better with the Mr., they've been getting weird and distant with, B. We argue about the dumbest stuff, and then spend an hour arguing about why we're arguing. Part of what I'd figured out is that we tend to be really similar. Our shiny red buttons are so close together we get into feedback loops that take on a life of their own. We've tried to resolve this a number of ways and nothing seemed to be working. This last weekend the Nothing we were arguing about started collapsing back into itself. We were reaching a breaking point, contemplating if we could even continue. I knew there were things I needed to say, but my brain was so full of crunching and "FUCK" that I couldn't think of what it was.
We finally turned out the lights and settled into an awkward not-tired pretending-we're-going-to-sleep-now.

And then the talking started. The quiet, timid talk that exhaustion resignation to the inevitable brings. What else do we have to loose? He said that he did feel overwhelmed. That we went so fast, in spite of declaring we'd take it slow, that new thing got piled on top of expectation on top of inexperience on top of excitement. Not surprisingly, we started slipping rather rapidly. He felt like I always wanted more, and I did, because there's a lot of neat stuff out there, but it began to seem like he could never give me enough. he started to pull back, and I'd think it was something wrong so I'd try harder to make it work, to try to explain to him why he was doing it wrong so we could do it right. I didn't mean that the way it might sound, I really felt like I was trying to give him the keys and cheat sheets to my brain-meats, but it came off as yet another reason why he was wrong. I couldn't figure out why he wasn't seeing things right, and then I started examining my own lenses. I realized that I'd been holding him accountable not just for his actions and responses now, but for how they would affect me in the future and how they would fit into a relationship we don't have yet in a house that doesn't exist yet. I realized was taking his resistance as a sign that he didn't want to go the distance, but that was never an agreement he'd actually made. I was letting the weight of what I wanted for the future cause some serious discord in what I had right in front of me. I have a good friend with an adventurous streak who's in a different stage of figuring out what he wants in life. I care about him very much and I'm curious to see what he'll do. I also know that there are some places he probably won't fit, and that my specific saga some years in the future might not feature him as a lead player. Maybe things will change, but there's too much good now to strain it to breaking for a handful of "maybe."

It's hard letting go of outcomes. I forget that from time to time I trust in forces larger than I to sort things out and have my best interest at hand. I forget that I've seen this borne out time and time again, and there has never been anything that's happened to me that has not made me better for it. It's really hard getting it through my head that if I'm going to play with conscientious, puzzle-solving monkeys who lead interesting lives, I'm going to have to accept that those lives won't always go the way I want them to. Their pasts, presents and futures are different, and that's the whole *point* for me, to see how other people do it and learn what I can from them. If their paths happen to line up with mine for a while, that's awesome, but I only have the ground under my feet, not their feet, and not where my feet are about to be. Getting caught up in what isn't is a great way to invalidate the experiences of the others who are here with me now.

The rest of the weekend went better, there were still a lot of unanswered questions. When I got home, I finally had a moment to figure out most of what I've penned here, and wrote a letter of apology/explanation/where-do-we-go-now in hopes of letting him know that much of what he'd said was right, and I'd finally figured out why he was right and that I'd try to take the seriousness out of it. To stop holding him accountable for things neither of us have control over and to stop getting up in Future Me's business. I have a great thing right here. I don't know what will become of it, how long it will last or what it may or may not grow into, but I know that if I keep trying to make it something it isn't, I will destroy what is along with even the chance of getting the pony.
Now I wait for the reply. I hate waiting. But I will, because though they may chafe in places, the grown-up pants make my ass look fantastic.