as the flowers fade

I stopped trusting you the night you didn't make sure I was okay after I ran out of that show. My trust for you vanished, and it never came back. In that moment, I learned that your public image was more important to you than I was. In that moment, it was over.

If I surround myself with people who prioritize their vanity over my safety, it is dangerous to my mental health. I need people who will check on me when I do things that are out of character. I need people who react when I show signs of panic (like squeezing their hand under the table with all my strength). If I surround myself with people who ignore my mental health, I put myself in danger.

You apologized for me. That felt like taking the side of my abuser. No matter what role you may have played in my escape, these have been your actions most recently. For someone who preaches living in the moment, you have spent an odd amount of time encouraging me to stay in a certain past.

I don't know if I will ever be able to rebuild trust after it's broken. I don't know if I'm supposed to be able to do that.

*****

Black-eyed susans still get me.

One of the nights you helped me escape from my house, we ended up in nature, or some semblance of it. You plucked a black-eyed susan and tucked it behind my ear. For the first time I could remember, you made me feel pretty. If I am worth decorating with beautiful things, then maybe I am beautiful.

Maybe that's how I can reshape memory. Black-eyed susans can just remind me that I have beauty. They don't need to go through you to get there. But they do. The smell of them can still stop me. My heart skips. You loved me, once. I trusted you then.

Now I'm 30.

Part of not writing for months at a time is not knowing where to start up again. Re-traumatization. Anxiety. PTSD. The never-ending story of financial and psychological abuse, with and without direct action by my abuser. The complicity of my community. Alienation from everyone I thought I knew. Re-learning healthy relationship (if I ever knew it in the first place). Feeling confident enough to move forward a little. Spending a lot of time with one other person in particular. Getting a couple's tarot reading at a Renaissance Festival on a whim. Making plans for myself, regardless. Taking steps to create positive change. I am ready for different scenery. I am planning and procrastinating and trying to be good with my money. I am grateful that my brain chemistry is working well enough to allow me to act within my life, even though I don't do it perfectly all the time. Doing stuff every weekend Camping trips in two different parts of PA, one of them solo. Visiting lakes and valleys.  Carrying a pocketful of rocks, especially while Mercury is retrograde. Burning sage. Reorganizing everything. Living too much in the future; working to remember that now is still happening. 

paragraphs from quarantine

I woke up this morning with my right eye crusted shut, confirming last night's suspicion that I was developing pinkeye. MedExpress opened two hours later (what's this adult thing of waking up at workday time on the weekend?), so I wasted no time in seeking prescriptions to heal it. Now I'm quarantined alone at home until at least tomorrow.

I'm an introvert, and I appreciate my alone time. But there's something different about being told you're not allowed to be around other humans. I value the choice to seclude myself, or to seek others, or to be alone in a place where I might encounter someone. I had plans today! I'm supposed to be somebody's birthday wish fairy! Fortunately, their birthday isn't really until tomorrow, so I have a little time to let antibiotics work and make me less contagious. I'm upset with my body for spoiling somebody else's plans.

I'm reading a book that I'm really excited about. Uniquely Human by Barry Prizant. One of my autism research idols wrote a book reflecting on his 40-year career in the field. He trained as a speech language pathologist, too. It's been a while since I've picked up a book and wanted to keep picking it up until I read every page. The basic drive behind the book is that we ought to stop trying to fix people with autism, and try to understand them instead. I'm positively delighted every time I encounter someone who shares this belief and articulates it meaningfully.

So that's what I'm doing today. I suppose I could provide some life updates, too. I guess the biggest one is that I am legally divorced, as of late December. Happy New Year, indeed. Getting that piece of paper evoked such a complicated mix of emotions. Functionally, it changes nothing. We have lived apart for over two years, and most days, my life does not involve him at all. I am independent. The divorce decree represents the close of a chapter, the conclusion of a long, expensive, and emotionally exhausting process. People expect me to feel some kind of closure, but there is none. This is merely a long overdue legal measure that does nothing to change my feelings about him or the situation, and little to advance the stage of my healing. There is far more to my recovery from my abusive relationship than just the dissolution of my marriage.

An interesting thing happened right around New Year's. This is the calendar year in which I turn 30. Yeah, age is just a number n'at. But something about it feels significant. And maybe it is this realization: I am an adult. Therefore, whatever I do is what an adult does. Having that realization has relieved some of the pressure to act like a grown-up.

I still plan to apply to PhD programs, and I'm going to wait another year. I went to a big ol' speech pathology convention in November, where I made some connections and discovered that my niche is even smaller than I thought it was. I need to learn some more things before I can feel confident committing to spending the next several years of my life in a place. The likelihood of attending school in Pittsburgh is incredibly small. I am putting off confronting the reality of that.

I am okay.