shit, I should maybe post something. it will probably be shoes, as I just signed up for shoedazzle upon Shannette's suggestion.

commitment to my phd

Brought to you by the letter P.

Last night N and I were playing Scattergories. I couldn't come up with anything for #8 and left it blank. The category was college majors. The letter was P. Seriously.

you know, I think it probably doesn't really matter what I do professionally or what I do with my life in general, as long as I'm kind

so there's that
I might have to work on it though

repercussions

On Sunday I was in kind of a bad place and, out of habit, called someone that I should not have. There were repercussions.

Wanting to send the message that these repercussions are not ok, wanting these repercussions to not happen again, I reached out to a mutual friend/acquaintance asking for his help with this, thinking he would relay the message, that they would call me a bitch, and at least J would get the message and leave me alone.

Instead, I was surprised when J's friend responded to me with kindness. Sorry that I have had to go through this, letting me know that, unfortunately, this is not the first one of these requests that he's gotten, promising to talk to J, to consider thoughtfully the best way to approach the issue with him, to respectfully keep the details of their conversation to himself, shielding me from any further emotional/verbal abuse per my request.

It occurs to me that this is how much my interactions with J over the years have warped my perception, my perception of this situation and how others perceive me, thinking it a matter of commonsense that his friend would respond to me with hostility rather than compassion, kindness and understanding.

In some ways it helps to know that this is a pattern with J, and that there is not just something wrong with me, which is what I have been hearing from him for the past six years. But I also hate to know that he has put other people through this, can't help but feel some complicity in normalizing and accepting his behavior for so long. And yes, I know it doesn't make me responsible for his behavior. But it's difficult reconciling this past with who I want to be, the threads of this past that keep finding their way into my present, in between some old way of being and some new way that I keep just missing, that I haven't quite found my way into yet.

self-care

lavender and chamomile bath
plus lavender and chamomile tea

session

so many connections made this morning

tried to walk them off

linking stories and words

walked to a yard sale
and didn't buy lemonade for fifty cents or touch anything really
i walked back down the street and tried things on and took them off
came home emptyhanded

making the connections i already had in words coming out before i can censor their double meaning

it became a habit

jason then jordan

for something like six months
of talking about myself for an hour every week i did not tell her about jason
jason who was in my life from 16 to 23
not i did not tell her about jason
i did not tell her jason exists
did not seem relevant somehow

when we finally talked about him a few months ago she wanted to know why "he is gross"
it had not occurred to me
that i did not have an answer because it seemed so obvious like common knowledge, jason is gross

never forgot any of it just didn't know how to connect it
only how to bury it in my stomach

with everything else
connected

start wearing purple wearing purple

This made me need to post this video: (although sadly I can't listen to the video b/c my laptop is broken and N's laptop's speakers are busted--I'll have to put the CD on later)