My weekend turned out much better than it had started on Saturday morning.
First of all, after writing my blog post, I went to one of my neighbors here, who is wonderfully kind and always encouraging me to stop by and say Hi to him & his wife, and told him very simply that I was feeling lonely. So he hung out with me for a little while, giving me tips of places I could explore on my motorcycle, and then sending me home with a bag full of yummy vegetables from their own garden.
As I was getting ready to go to the swimming-pool one of my most recent but also most regular climbing buddies replied to me confirming his availability to climb together on Sunday — which we did yesterday and had another great day climbing outdoors together, with interesting and very open conversations, strengthening our bond as climbing buddies and platonic friends.
I struggled a bit through my swim on Saturday — and that might even have been just physical tiredness. But the workout in the fresh air & sunshine (it was my last swim outdoors before the pool got closed for this season) helped me, and I came home feeling relaxed and at peace, feeling a quiet, grounded joy. And well enough to reconnect to two close friends with whom conversations have not been too easy lately, for different reasons.
They’re both friends from California and with both there has been physical intimacy on top of very deep emotional and intellectual connections. They are both persons I care for very much and miss and who, I know with no doubt, care for me and miss me. The details of why we haven’t been able to connect as much or as deeply in the past months are different with each of these two people, as they themselves are quite different from each other, but nonetheless they both mean a lot to me and I know their affection for me is deep and sincere. So being able to reconnect with them on Saturday was really lovely. I video-chatted with one of them for over two hours and then with the other for about an hour, thus effectively spending my Saturday afternoon with two of my dearest friends in California! I wouldn’t have been able to do that even just a week or two ago: the simple fact that I was emotionally ready to do so, to have such deep, open-hearted, even vulnerable conversations with them, especially with the non-binary climbing friend, was really wonderful. So healing — such a gift!
After the two video-calls, I watered the garden and took care of the plants here before getting dinner, in order to calm all the reeling emotions in my heart. And by dinner-time all that was left was the glow, the joy, of those conversations, of those (re)connections. The profound, tangible feeling of those little “jewels” that the conversations with those two friends left me, planted in my heart.
It also felt like reassembling pieces. Rebuilding these important relationships that, for different reasons, have suffered a bit over the past few months. And rebuilding them in a different way, almost on different foundations from previously, partly also because of my own discoveries in gender-identity and changes in how I’m approaching relationships.
Analogously, climbing with my buddy yesterday also felt like building something in a way that is very new to me, that I haven’t experienced since I was around 16 years old, basically since I was “pre-sexual”. Most of my new relationships, especially here in Colorado, have this new (or newly found) feel or dynamics for me, which I like but which I’m also not used to anymore, that I haven’t really had for almost a quarter of a century and that I therefore have to relearn.
As I’m getting to know myself, my authentic self, better and better, the way I relate to & interact with other people is also changing, the way I’m connecting and building relationships is changing — mostly for the better. It’s nice — wonderful, actually. I like it. But it’s also baffling because it’s so new to me or, rather, something familiar to me from a part of my life that is quite far in my past… I’m relearning.
I feel that in almost every aspect of my life in this moment I am learning or relearning — building or rebuilding.
In a way, I feel like I have a multitude of random pieces from a LEGO box strewn in front of me that I can arrange and rearrange almost as I wish now. It’s exciting and empowering and lovely (lovely in the original sense of the word, especially when it comes to relationships), but it’s also scary and so much work!
It’s beautiful but also a little daunting and it takes effort, at least if one wants to do it well, it takes intention and attention. Dedication.
The Little Prince and the Fox 