Gender Jumper

I don't bother thinking very hard about the tension between free will and determinism unless I'm depressed and my usual self-regulation efforts aren't working. But it's rare that I start thinking about them without already noticing the depression and self-regulation stall.

This was not the week I thought I was going to have.

• I got turned down for a job I really, really wanted. I trust that it's going to lead me to better things (or potentially I reapply later), but a lot of my cognitive load had been going to daydreaming about relocating and now it's not really sure where to go.
• A trans woman died in my community. I had only met her once or twice: long enough to get a massive crush, not long enough to learn her last name. But I went to the grief circle tonight and offered what support I could to her grieving parents and others.
• The friend I trust to be untrustworthy may be about to lose one parent to illness and another to the grief. I really wish people would call on a care coach or family diplomat during such difficult times. This particular friend just stormed off and probably got high.
• Speaking of mental illness, when I started gray-rocking my fam-o about three years ago, I never would have imagined they would just stop participating. I have literally no idea what's happening over there right now, because they each started dealing with heavy shit and they simply do not know how to communicate out of anything other than idleness or overwhelm.
• My ostensible dating partner and friend of 30+ years abruptly reconnected with an ex last week and derailed our plans to share physical space (which is a big deal because their family doesn't mask consistently so I have to build a lot of faith and request 5 days of relative isolation). I can't help worrying that some of this was sparked by their recent realization that I was going to move away sooner or later, but they are not strong at self-advocacy nor even certain kinds of self-awareness and I horrible at navigating the unspoken.
• My planned road trip to visit hyper-cautious loved ones in central Texas did not happen because 2/3 of us got nasty spring colds (I allow for the fact it could have been COVID, but I have zero evidence and a lifetime of experience with allergies turning into sinus infections and it felt like the latter; that said, these things just plain heal more slowly than they did before my two cases of COVID).
• Signs currently point to a new hypomania as I come out of sick-space: the excitement of the big change being redirected into staying calm combined with having been rather idle the past two weeks, so that's why I'm still up at 7am (I did have a 3-hour nap earlier, which is usually navigable for me) documenting some of the goings on instead of sleeping.
• Have had a strong urge to write the past few days thanks to a writing group I'm co-leading, but I'm wavering between too much and too little to say.
• My therapist wants to terminate after over ten years together because she has nothing left to teach me, I'm figuring it all out on my own. I agree it's time, but that doesn't mean I'm enthusiastic about it.

I should probably read the Tao or something contemplative, then try again to sleep.

Last year, I started sniffing around for a support group for facilitators, but not much turned up. I believe firmly that the capacity to hold space for others carries a specific mindset that can be difficult to take off or put on at will; if those who hold space for others cannot find ways to commiserate and consult, we burn out much faster.

But having the idea and having an execution are two different things!

I suppose the closest I have found is the Grief and Care Under Capitalism Support Group, which has been an invaluable space the past 6+ months. I've also felt connected to the person who facilitates, but I don't quite know what degree they are open to talking more outside the space. (I suppose I could ask. Ugh. I've been in too many normie spaces the last few years and just like forgot how to be bold and sensitive at the same time. Which I suppose it what makes me a good facilitator, so I haven't forgotten I just compartmentalized it as a work skill?)

Professionals do this: therapists have therapists, massage therapists get massages, social workers consult each other, Civil Rights activists literally invented "self-care" and "kitchen table activism" because they were necessary to sustain the movement.

As a professional, I'm pretty liminal (but as a liminalist, I'm pretty professional?), so it can be hard to find my people. ( (Tangent about people drifting apart.) ) The best thing I can do is accept their terms and hope they change some day. That in itself is a form of holding space for someone.

Anyway, if anyone ever wants to connect about holding space in bleak times, HMU.

From late 2016 through the end of graduate school, I was low-key fixated on grief. I had lost my grandfather, two very important relationships, and enough of my sense of self that I committed to being reborn. Sometimes it's just easier to start from scratch than to sort through so much. But even then, I think there was a part of Free (that is, the person I was before, his name was Free) that tried to endure. And although my family is doing better than we have any right to 21 months into the global pandemic and the ongoing frisson of capitalism making its (last?) stand, I'm having a really hard time seeing any future that isn't still hindered by the flotsam of Free's dreams, expectations, and idealistic trust. All year I've been wrestling with whether to sit still where it's safe or dart forward into risk, and to my detriment I have had this conversation mostly internally. Moreover, because I have spent about two years utterly unable to see the future -- I mean, not like I'm psychic, but I am used to having some "sense" of what is possible, where to direct my energy -- I have also walled off the past. What is happening now is about the present, therefore I should live in the present -- right?

But I'm not. I'm still building intentions around the future Free saw for himself and his (my) family. Many times this year, I was tempted to give up on taking the pandemic this seriously and just make a go of that future anyway. But something would hold me back, and sure enough a new variant wave would appear shortly thereafter. Guess I'm not completely out of touch with the future, after all -- maybe it's me, my perception/read. So before I start a deeper thinky on where I need to direct my focus in 2022, I think I need to do what I never did when I had my heart set on it: I need to write out the intention, the plan, the expectation. I'm not sure I will be able to exorcise the whole thing unless I actually see it lain out before me.

( Flashback to March 1, 2020... )