Category Archives: Uncategorized

My days are full of things to do, people to see, friends who love me. But my soul is empty, my heart a hole.  I run through my days, seemingly my usual active, lively self on the outside. But I’m dead inside.  I’m an empty shell.

My friends ask me how I’m doing. And I don’t really know what to answer. There are days when my emotions fluctuate wildly and are extremely intense — pain, sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, but also a sense of freedom, liberation, belonging here geographically. On days of such emotional roller-coasters it’s hard for me to sayContinue reading “The lost boy”

Here and now, at home in Colorado.  It’s warm, already too warm for me to go for a run at 9am. It’s sunny and bright and there’s a very gentle breeze. Some birds are chirping. Somebody is mowing a lawn not too far from my front porch — I cannot see them but I canContinue reading “Here & now: self-regulating at home in Colorado”

I really like and relate to the idea(s) of “safe haven & secure basis” mentioned in Jessica Fern’s book Polysecure.  The “safe haven & secure basis” are the two main aspects of healthy attachment-based relationships.  When my European genderqueer lover/friend left to go back home to Europe a week ago, one of my most significantContinue reading “Safe havens and secure bases”

It hit me all of a sudden last night while I was brushing my teeth: four months is a third of a year, a consistent part of a whole year. Four and a half months was the time my European genderqueer friend spent here in Colorado this year and the amount of time they wereContinue reading “One third”

I’m tired from having run myself ragged all week, from having gotten up at 5am and spent all day climbing outdoors both days this weekend, from the long, solitary walk along the creek after today’s climbing.  But it’s precisely these two days of climbing outdoors, learning new skills, meeting new people, pushing my comfort zoneContinue reading “I’m not giving up”

How can it hurt so much? How is it even physically possible for it to hurt so much?  Is it worse today than Tuesday or Wednesday or yesterday because it’s finally starting to sink in? The initial shock and void from their departure is now turning into an established reality of their absence being forContinue reading

How can it be that today hurts even more than yesterday?  Maybe it’s the physical exhaustion, all the running around and wearing myself out, which has thankfully allowed me to sleep at night, now catching up with me and making me feel even more sad and anxious from loneliness.  Or maybe it’s the dream IContinue reading “European longing?”

[Trigger warnings & spoiler alerts: loss, grief, pain, anxiety; PTSD; long-COVID; a couple details about Fredrik’s Backman’s novel “Anxious people”] Once again, I’m going to use Fredrik Backman’s words (from his book Anxious people) to express my current emotions and feelings I have already had several other times in the past — that horrible, terrifyingContinue reading ““Anxious people””

Here it is, that pain that hardly allows me to sit still, hardly allows me to breathe.  The sense of loss, the loneliness, the broken habits even — it’s so hard to bear, especially in an empty house.  Yesterday — the day of the big, painful separation from my European sweetheart and a week fromContinue reading