proximoception | (no subject)

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.

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.

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.