The Little Prince and the Fox

[I cannot write about this horrible war Putin is waging on the Ukraine, for now, because it’s too painful for me.]

“What Sarah Said” [Death Cab for Cutie, “Plans” album]

“And it came to me then

That every plan

Is a tiny prayer to father time

As I stared at my shoes

In the ICU

That reeked of piss and 409

And I rationed my breaths

As I said to myself

That I’d already taken too much today

As each descending peak

On the LCD

Took you a little farther away from me

Away from me

Amongst the vending machines

And year old magazines

In a place where we only say goodbye

It sung like a violent wind

That our memories depend

On a faulty camera in our minds

And I knew that you were truth

I would rather lose

Than to have never lain beside at all

And I looked around

At all the eyes on the ground

As the TV entertained itself

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room

Just nervous paces bracing for bad news

And then the nurse comes round

And everyone lifts their heads

But I’m thinking of what Sarah said

That love is watching someone die

So who’s gonna watch you die

So who’s gonna watch you die

So who’s gonna watch you die”

This is one of my favorite songs by Death Cab for Cutie. For its lyrics. 

The closest I’ve been to serious, possibly life-threatening situations has been during my own COVID illness in March 2020 and my two ED visits, yesterday and three months ago. For now, I’ve always been on the side of the person needing comfort and have been blessed with “happy endings”. Nevertheless, the difference between my ED visit three months ago with a friend sitting next to me and holding my hand nearly the whole time compared to my lonely five hours in the ED yesterday and my weeks of isolation in the spring of 2020 is huge. The comfort that a human presence at one’s side in moments of intense physical pain and fear for one’s life can bring, at least for me, is hard to describe in words. 

I remember how I’ve often thought, during peaks in the pandemic, of those poor souls alone in their (hospital) beds fighting for their lives in total isolation for fear of spreading the infection: I cannot help but think that the isolation was almost as deadly for them as the virus.  [And I know this is just the tip of the iceberg, just one tiny drop in the ocean of human suffering, but every little drop can be unbearably painful.]

I’ve never been the one “at the bedside”. I don’t know how I would hold up to it. But I do believe that being there for someone in their hardest, scariest moment(s) is a profound act of love.

I’m finding it difficult to find an overall, stable balance. 

Despite feeling much better, lighter than I had in a long time in California, I’m still swinging between different, and often intense, emotions. 

There are a lot of moments of loneliness. Despite living with my host family. Despite my need and desire for solitude. It is undeniable that my mood invariably improves after interacting and/or chatting with other people, and even more so if in person. 

Getting my textbook done by the designated deadline is a great motivation, but it often isn’t enough: this work has been more difficult this week, partly because of the chapter’s contents/structure, partly because of my own oscillating emotions influenced by external factors as well (interactions with certain persons, lack of exercise due to injury). 

And so I swing — back and forth, up and down. 

But what does remain crystal clear is that I need in person interaction with other human beings; I need contact and connection (albeit it online/virtual/digital) with my close friends who are geographically distant; and I need to have goals that give meaning and purpose to my existence, to my daily life.

At 5am I woke up to pee, as I often do in the wee hours of the night or early morning. But this time, I didn’t go straight back to bed, despite my tiredness. The moon was full last night. And we had just had an abundant snow fall throughout the afternoon and evening. I had been waiting for such a coincidence of events for a couple weeks, at least, looking forward to the beautiful shine of the full moon on the pure white expanse blanketing everything. And last night I saw it. Even if only through the big front windows of the house because, unfortunately, I was truly too tired to get dressed and go out for a walk at that time. But I promised myself that if I get another full moon on a clear night over a beautiful expanse of snow like last night, I’m going to go out for a walk in it. I might even be able to do it this evening before going to sleep… 

Nevertheless, the promise of the snow storm ending by 5am and leading up to a clear night in perfect synchrony with the return of the full moon — that promise was held and I was able to enjoy it. 

Another promise was held last night. One to myself that I made in summer of 2016, about six months after moving from Europe to California, and that I sealed with a ring that I still always wear. I promised myself that I would never again put myself in the conditions of having to make an important life decision influenced by a romantic partner or romantic feelings in a way that would be limiting of my own identity or deepest needs/dreams. Which effectively meant, and means, that if there were someone for whom I feel in a strong, special, or romantic way in a moment of my life when I actually need to work on personal issues of my own and/or make an important decision along my path for which I need to reflect on my own, I would ask that person to wait. 

And last night I did it. I asked my dear non-binary friend back in California who would have wanted to visit me here already in two or three weeks to wait. I also told them that I’m scared; that I would like to see them but need some extra time and space on my own now; that this decision is also hard for me and scary because I’m afraid of losing their friendship if I ask them to wait. And they replied that I wouldn’t lose their friendship, that it’s always okay to take time. 

I really hope they mean it. I’ll have to take the risk anyway. A lot went unsaid, at least on my part, a lot that I wish I had said, or had said differently. So I might write them a letter. I don’t really know how they feel about me and our friendship. There might have been a lot left in between the lines in our conversation last night, or not. Nevertheless, I kept my promise to myself, I followed my gut feeling, and despite this being a very scary and lonely decision for me, I know this is what I need to do for my own good (as well as the other person’s) right now. 

Here and now.

It’s snowing again — technically, we’re in for another snow storm until tomorrow morning. I made it to the climbing gym and back just before it started today. 

I actually like this alternating, varied winter weather. Snow storms last only a couple days, blanketing everything in a soft layer of white. The temperatures drop below freezing for a few days. The sun starts shining again while it’s still cold, and then the temperatures start rising again up into the 40s or even low 50s. The snow on the roads and fields slowly melts, at least partly. The trails become a fun mix of mud, ice, snow and dirt (quite tricky!), while the mountains on the horizon remain blanketed in their white coats. 

During the day or two of heavy snow falling, we all stay indoors, but then, as soon as it stops, we’re all outside, enjoying the outdoors again. And then this cycle repeats itself, once every week or ten days or so. 

I like it. I love it. And it resonates well with my present state of mind, with my heart’s own current cycles: the waves of grief, the sadness, the spontaneous reflections, sitting with my emotions, the need to relax, to slow down; and the exuberance, the love for nature and the outdoors, the joy of being in a place that is somewhat familiar to me but mostly still new and exciting. And all my emotions, although very profound and intense, all so calm and much more tranquil than ever before. 

I’ve been here three weeks now, roughly a fifth of the time I have planned here, and I still feel it’s been one of the best decisions of my life to take this particular, maybe unique, break. 

Cat therapy is REAL — at least, for me it is! 

My host family has an adorable cat, Gaia. 

When I first met them, almost six years ago, they also had Gaia’s brother Helios, and during the Christmas holidays of 2016-2017, I took care of their house and both their cats for a couple weeks. It was the first time I had ever really done cat-sitting and I remember how blissful (and healing) it was. 

And it’s the same now. Gaia has always been very cuddly. Even when Helios was still alive, she was the one who’d always come and lay in my lap and snuggle with me as son as I sat to relax. She did it last summer here, too, even with my whole host family present, and she’s doing it again now. 

It’s amazing how blissful it can be to just sit and relax with a cat in one’s lap, stroking it while it purrs. 

Maybe it’s also this sitting with Gaia purring in my lap that is helping me to sit with my emotions, literally as well as figuratively, with more and more ease?!?

… and here’s another one today…

“… that’s what grief is — a yearning for that one last moment of contact that would settle everything.” [‘Wintering’ by Katherine May]

It’s snowing again. After a week of sunshine and progressively warm weather, this soft white blanket falling over the world feels nice, soothing, and especially gentle — something I really need today for my own “wintering”, for some recovery of my own. 

After some events this past week that have been very troubling for me and the breakthroughs I had after breakfast, in rapid succession, yesterday and this morning, today’s psychotherapy session was hefty. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’m ready and even eager to address some older, deeper issues of mine, but sometimes they get triggered and/or clarified without my trying, like a volcano erupting. In the past two weeks I feel like I finally started doing the heavy-lifting in my therapy sessions, and heavy-lifting is tiring. As an athlete, I know my body benefits from the right amount of weight-lifting: it helps strengthen me and thus avoid serious injuries, in appropriate ways/quantities. But it’s also tiring and not really fun. 

Last Sunday, I had a fall out, almost a fight with one of my dearest friends in California who was temporarily looking after my pet snake that I couldn’t bring along to Colorado with me. This event really upset me, for days. But apart from pain and anxiety, it also triggered self reflection and, ultimately, some deep and invaluable understanding about myself, my past, my behavioral patterns and relationships. 

After this fall out or break up or fight with this particular friend happened, I realized that I have found and lost many friends and other types of relationships along my winding path: but while some of them ended painfully, others just faded almost unnoticed, despite maybe having been just as deep or important. What was the difference? What brings on the pain for me in some relationships ending but not in others? 

I realized that the key was conflict. 

I am terrified of conflict. It might be the thing I fear the most in the whole world. Because when conflict arises between me and someone whose acceptance or affection or approval is important to me — be it a friend, a romantic partner, a family member or a coworker — it is intimately and indissolubly intertwined with rejection. If conflict arises between me and a person whose approval/acceptance/affection is important for me, then I feel responsible for the conflict, as if I were its only cause; I feel that I’m a “bad person”, a “monster”, and that as such I will be rejected. Although rationally I may very well know this is not at all true, this vicious circle feeds on childhood trauma so deeply ingrained within me that it’s really hard, almost impossible, to keep at bay. And I had never articulated it so fully, so completely, so openly as I did today: first, while journaling this morning; then, with my counselor’s help in my therapy session; and now, opening up here. 

I have also come to understand that profound, unfathomable, almost cosmic or existential sadness from earlier this week: it was grief. And grief precisely in the sense outlined by author Katherine May in her wonderful book ‘Wintering’ that I’ve just started reading. 

Yes, for me grief really is “a yearning for that one last moment of contact that would settle everything.” And that’s why I was feeling so abysmally sad this week: because of a conflict with a cherished friend who was then avoiding me, thus refusing me that “one last moment of contact that would settle everything”. This, in turn, brought up old feelings of rejection along with the unhealed wound from another relatively recent conflict and/or rejection (or something that felt as such to me) with another person who in some weird, confusing ways was dear and close to me, and with whom I wasn’t able to get the closure that my heart would really need. The closure that, for me, would come only from “that one last moment of contact that would settle everything”. That settling of everything which for me would mean the confirmation of “not being a bad person”, the confirmation of “not being a monster” — which wouldn’t need to come necessarily from the other person telling me as much explicitly, but rather from my own actions, doing one last thing which for me would finally represent “that one last moment of contact that would settle everything.” To help me feel good again, once and for all.

—————————————————–

[Opening up like this is terrifying, but much less terrifying than conflict is for me. This opening up, especially after having done it with my counselor this morning, is therapeutic and I know it will eventually bring me full healing. One step at a time, one layer at a time. And now that this scary step of writing here is taken, now it’s time for self-care: time for the warm, cozy self-care of “wintering”.]

I’m still on my runner’s high from this morning: it was my best trail run, yet (in wintertime here)! 

Dinner with my host family, some good sleep, and an early energetic morning, helped dispel yesterday’s sadness — and an emotional breakthrough after breakfast clarified it. [I’ll write more about this when I’m ready to do so.]

So today has been a really good day, confirming how much I not only love it here but also love the aspects of me that come out here. The winter and/or the mountains here seem to be toughening me up again, giving back to me parts of myself that I had lost or forgotten. The weird weather and temperate climate of coastal California, and then the isolation during COVID as well as the super long recovery from my own illness throughout 2020 and half of 2021 — it feels like all these factors took away some of my toughness, some of my readiness to always get out there no matter what the weather is like, how could (or hot) it might be, despite a runny nose or slightly weaker ankle. Now I’m doing things more readily again here: I’m pushing myself more while also respecting my body & mind & soul more. I’m getting out there no matter what, unless it’s really unhealthy or dangerous for me to do so (like a snow blizzard). I’m running in all temperatures and on all sorts of terrains that I had never tackled before, yearning steep trails and the woods. It takes so much focus to run on these trail here in wintertime because the terrain is so tricky, but I love it because it takes me to some other level or type of consciousness: I connect with myself as well as my surroundings in a way that I had never before experienced. I’m seeing and feeling new parts of myself while also, somehow, reconnecting to parts of me and my relationship with the mountains that I had lost or forgotten for so long. I love the way I feel here: I love the aspects of me that come out here. And I love the fact that, although most of my training sessions here are heftier than in California, I have much more energy throughout the day even to do my intellectual work (probably thanks to the limited amount of stress I have here). And last but not least, I love my body: having come into & come out with my non-binary/trans gender identity really helped me overcome my body-image issues; but the “toughness” I feel within me coming out in this environment puts me even more at peace with every little aspect of my body, with that overall boyish strength rounded off by the female thighs…

I’m not saying the fear or sadness are all gone, suddenly. But today I got some wonderful reprieve from them, thanks to being in the moment, being present here & now, focusing on the trail I was treading today. One step at a time.

I’m feeling terribly sad. 

I’ve been feeling sad in a sort of cosmic, unfathomable, maybe existential way for the past few days. And also afraid. But mostly sad. 

Last night, as I watched the end of the movie “Don’t look up” with my host family, tears streamed uncontrollably down my cheeks, and it felt like such a relief. I would feel the need to cry some more, to be held safely and warmly and cry. But I cannot manage.

I love it here and I’m feeling physically well and even mentally much better than just a few weeks ago in California. When I go running or hiking on trails or even driving down the roads here, I feel like I’m in a different state of consciousness or a different person or a different version of me from California. Maybe that’s why I’m sad, because every change also entails some loss?

I don’t know why I’m feeling so cosmically, so existentially sad. Or, rather, I can see many different reasons for being sad and/or afraid, but I think the true reason is buried deeper and thus harder for me to see at the moment. All I can put into words for now is this feeling of deep, deep sadness, like a bottomless ocean, dark and unfathomable — somehow quiet and yet holding some turmoil in its lonely depths.