flamingsword | What do I want?

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Maybe if I just braindump All The Things, I can figure out what I want and why I want it?

• I want to live somewhere that I don’t feel constantly under threat.
• I want to not have to move.
• I want to be around close friends.
• I want to be in friendships and relationships with people who meet my needs, whose needs I feel I can meet in turn.
• I want to drink until my shoulders relax.
• I want to go back to school, to learn to be more excellent at caring for people, even if it means paying over $9k of my retirement money.
• I want to not leave my cats behind.
• I want to not miss Brian, but I already miss him, have done for a while, and he’s been here the whole time.
• I want the paperwork and the sorting through things to be done already.

So I guess I want to be someplace emotionally safe? I want to be around people and animals that are emotionally present and reciprocal (inasmuch as anything can be).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

nyyki

Okay, are any of these incompatible with others in your list? These sound like the best case wants, so how much are you willing to give up part of each one of them to get the best total outcome?And for the big one, is there a way where you could rock back the breakup, or are things past a point of return?

I think you already know this, but I'm going to state it anyway. I Do NOT Want You To Go Away.

From:

flamingsword

The divorce might not be past the point of no return, but Ghost and I have been functioning as friends who sleep together instead of spouses for a while now. It’s part of why I miss him so much. We’re pretty good friends? But it’s been a strained romantic relationship for about a year.

So many of these wants are opposed to each other, and I’m making a lot of trade-offs here. I am not a millionaire who can jet around the country and live wherever the mood takes me, so I kind of have to choose between the relative physical safety of progressive places and the relative psychiatric safety of being around my people who can catch me going off the rails before I’m in places they make you wear the grippy socks.

I’m going to have to be super careful about sleep, setting limits, stress, and activity levels this next year. Mom considers my mental health to be fine as long as I’m not screaming and crying and having meltdowns where she can see them. It’s not great.

I don’t want to need to move away from you, but most of the stuff I do for you is already over the phone, so I will be moving our phone calls to a non-Friday-day time when I will presumably have class, and continuing to talk to you weekly. I might need to talk to your roomie and set up a bribe system for her to drop everything and get you to a hospital if shit goes wrong, though.

From:

nyyki

So in short, it's a jigsaw puzzle. What is the value in not getting divorced if you two are only friends at this point?

I've told you several times, if our calls are getting in the way of stuff you need or want to do, they're always optional. I will of course miss them, but I don't want to be an imposition. And the only reason why what you do for me is phone based most of the time is because I know that more than that isn't something you can do. I have things where I could use sighted help that doesn't mean me having to navigate someone's refusal to face their neuro-divergence, but you're way busy and stuff for me means driving across town much of the time.

From:

flamingsword

You don’t get to weasel out of our calls that easily. Just because I will be busy Fridays starting in mid-February doesn’t mean you get to go hermitting more than you already do. We’ll have to pick another day closer to the time when we both know what our schedules will probably look like for the year. In the meantime, I just knitted the buttonholes onto the button-band! I feel accomplished, which is good since I’m cranky as shit today. In related news, vaccines are immunologically wonderful and also suck to get.

From:

nyyki

Please -- I would never try to weasel out of contact with others. You're squeezing me into a very tight sack, and I don't want to increase your stress in what is already a busy time. This is one of those things about being empathic -- I don't overburden others and I don't nag either. If someone can't do something I'll find another way to get it done, or I'll let whatever it is go. I am very protective about the people I care about.

And it still stands -- if I'm not editing, which most often happens on Wednesday afternoons, my schedule is almost always wide open.

And cool -- is the length finished then?

From:

flamingsword

You know when you keep offering to not talk to me, over and over, it makes me feel like you’re looking for an excuse. Not saying it’s true, just that it can look that way, you know?

And most of the length minus the couple-few inches at the bottom where the decorative stitching will go that keeps it from rolling up at the bottom instead of lying flat are done, yeah.

From:

nyyki

That is not my intention. I try hard not to play those kinds of games -- I'm saying that because you're busier than the only person with a drool rag at a basset hound convention, and your schedule has gotten worse lately, for some odd reason. You know my background, so you know that I'm protective of the people I care about, and you're way low on social spoons lately, so this is all about taking care of a close friend. And this also isn't some head game going on in my skull about me not being worthy of having good friends either, just in case a slight glimmer of that idea tried to sneak into your mind. I have very few people I talk to on a weekly basis, and my time is open most days.

And cool, I guess the rest of the button hole stuff and the sleeves are the big things to take care of now?