turbulence

April 17

Afternoon

Hi, guys. I'm feeling a little psychically out-of-whack today, so if this entry ranges all over the emotional and informational map, don't worry. We're just experiencing some personal turbulence.

*

I had a really heavy talk with Meg last night, about our relationship-- our expectations and our needs. We came up against a couple of somewhat fundamental differences and beat our heads against them for a while and finally fell back, exhausted.

We're going to try to work this stuff out. Neither one of us wants to imagine life without the other. We're poised on the edge of starting our life together, and for each of us, there's nothing more important than the other. But there are issues, problems, confusions... it's going to take a lot of talking things out and making accomodations, I think.

Thinking about that makes me tired. But it's certainly worth it to me to do the work.

*

I have a good life. People who love me. A job that (despite occasional, and currently significant, annoyances) pays me more than enough to live well while not demanding too much effort from me. Good books to read. A cupboard full of yummy food. Great story ideas. A career ahead of me. Poetry. Flowers. Mocha chai. Basketball games. Usually that stuff is at the forefront of my head. The good stuff is so obvious, so bright and fine, that I buzz happily along through life.

And yet, these little perturbances come along sometimes and knock me off my stride. Not for long, admittedly; I don't have a large capacity for self-pity or existential sorrow, I'm too shallow and blessed with zippy brain-chemistry for that. But sometimes little things loom large, and things that seemed solid suddenly seem likely to crumble.

Usually that feeling only lasts for a few hours, or a day, and then I get my perspective back.

But they can be long hours. It can be a long day.

I don't like being scared. I'm not good at it. It doesn't do anything useful for me.

*

I have work I need to do tonight (work that under other circumstances would seem fun-- revisions, slush reading, crits), but I think I need a break. I had a wonderful time this weekend (more than wonderful, skull-thumpingly glorious), but it wasn't time spent alone, with just myself, and that's the kind of time I need right now. Time to think-- and not to think about poems or stories or crits or any of that, but to think about myself, and the people who are most intimately involved with me. About my life.

And just as importantly, I need to not think for a while about all the little things that have been weighing so heavily lately. It's like all these tiny annoyances of the past few weeks have acted to weaken my mental immune system, so that when the larger problem-- the pneumonia, the influenza, of this argument/discussion with Meg-- hit me, I was much less prepared for it than I would have been otherwise. My perspective is shot. I don't even trust myself to assess the significance of our disagreement. I might be blowing it way out of proportion.

Then again, I might not. But I love her. So we'll figure it out.

Tonight I'll go home. Talk to Meg, for a bit, at least. Maybe go for a run. Then go to Pergolesi with my journal, my much neglected other journal, the paper one, and write about some of the joy and fear and everything that's been hitting me lately. And then read for a while. Maybe turn off my brain. I haven't seen a movie in a while. I used to take the time for that; I don't seem to have the time anymore, and I'm not sure why not.

*

The more I think about this, the more I calm down, already. I've been with Meg for 20 months (admittedly that's been a geographically distant "with" for some months now, but still), and this is probably the biggest fight we've had-- one of the only fights we've had (about real issues, I mean-- not counting bickering on long car rides and stuff like that). We've had a remarkably good and peaceful run, and so this disagreement is hitting me with probably disproportionate force. A molehill can look like a mountain when there's nothing else in the field-of-view to provide scale. My relationship with her is, without doubt, the healthiest, most openly communicative, most supportive and sustaining relationship I've ever had. We're good for each other. We love each other.

I hope we can work this out.