(no subject)

[proximoception]

How does one put a life back together?

Comments

[jones-casey.livejournal.com]

i don't feel very qualified to answer because i'm still at it, and i don't think i'm all that good at it, but i have learned that one does not do it alone.

[consonantia.livejournal.com]

One piece at a time, I think some would say.

But the metaphor implies that there's a pie dish or something on which to assemble the pieces. If one hasn't even got that ground, that center, or if that's how one feels, the struggle feels rather like having to pull oneself up by the bootstraps.

You trust that you have the strength to fight the fight, you acknowledge the courage it takes just to have to fight the fight, you nonetheless give yourself permission to feel tired sometimes, you remember that the world is glorious and worth living in, you keep faith that you deserve happiness and love, and to be the best that you can be.

[consonantia.livejournal.com]

And you try your best to keep a sense of humor.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

I found that I'd arrayed around me the stories that were about what I needed to do and what I wanted a recovery to be like. Some of them I'd been carrying around for quite a while. They're personal to me, of course. I hear some of the exchanges in Orlando:
"Ma'am, are you wounded?"
"I am dead, sir."
in a way that's not uniquely particular to me, but, even still. There's an exchange in LA Confidential, as well.
"The Night Owl made you. You want to tear that down?"
"With a wrecking ball."

So I'd been planning the what of it, and even the how, long before I started, in my affections. I discovered from these affections a lot about what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it.

One kind of tries to let oneself listen in on one's own conversations differently. Or I did. I don't imagine you're as unknown to yourself as I am to me.

You are, as ever, to me, a great explorer of difficult territory, and a hero.

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

So, how, I don't know. But there's a lot of company. I really loathed all of Possession, except for the part about the one character putting language back together, remaking the world.

Or, you know, these are just sad little totems and bits of shell, charms, carried superstitiously. I think sometimes you can carry them usefully even while deriding them.

[consonantia.livejournal.com]

One kind of tries to let oneself listen in on one's own conversations differently.

Yes, perspective.

I think sometimes you can carry them usefully even while deriding them.

Again, perspective.

[thelican.livejournal.com]

I found that I'd arrayed around me the stories that were about what I needed to do and what I wanted a recovery to be like.

Me too.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

If nothing else I clearly have some (inadvertent) skill at casting myself in a way overly favorable light. But I could accuse me of such things...

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

You've been pretty consistently dispassionate in descriptions of intense emotional situations. That by itself exerts chilling effect on offers to judge other people in those situations. And when you're given bait to do it, I don't see you take it.

So you're managing to talk about what you're going through, but also to, in how you talk, guide the lot of us in how we reply.

You live in the situation, so reasonably you're wary of taking praise? But I think, at least in how you're negotiating this, you're quite praiseworthy.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I'm depressed, genuinely depressed, and burnt out, is what I am. But I guess I did hold it together when it mattered most, and I'm glad I was somehow able to. Thank you for insisting I see that.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Is that image of a cross thing from an Escape the Room game?

[wolodymyr.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's from Neon Genesis Evangelion, lifted from an article about an episode that focuses on Misato Katsuragi.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I love that Japanese ink style, at least for landscapes and inanimate objects.