Friday, 15 September 2017

Where are we now?

The past month or so has been full of personal challenges for me that I haven't been ready to write about and share on my blog until now. When it comes to exposing some of my deepest thoughts and feelings, I try to ensure that I write from a place of calm objective honesty, rather than irrational myopic bias. Some of what I'm going to share today is connected to previous posts like Communication Breakdown, but some thoughts will be entirely new to my blogsphere.

2017 has been a year of big changes in my life. I got married, I'm in the process of packing for moving in with the Bear (finally), and I've been devoting a lot of my energy to finding more appropriate employment. I've been deepening my poly connections, whilst making some new friends and reconnecting with old ones along the way. I've been navigating difficult health issues (both physical and mental) and trying to find a way forward to wellness.

August was a particularly rough month for me. I was dealing with intense feelings around being excluded from my poly circle (again, due to money, and physical limitations); I had removed the hormonal IUD I've been on for the past five years which was messing up my body chemistry big time; and I was head-long in the search for new housing. My stress level was therefore, really high. My physical pain symptoms made sleep difficult. My mental health started to decline...and sleep became very challenging. I could feel my true self feeling trapped in a little jail surrounded by depression and hard thoughts. And I felt powerless inside to stop some of the thoughts and behaviours that were elicited by my depression. My thoughts became extreme and Bear had to run interference when he saw/heard that I was clearly going off the rails. Thank you Bear for helping me through those hard moments.

OMG the varying feels of depression. This is fairly accurate for me at times.
Depression for me comes in waves. And it can be exacerbated by other people's depression too. I have to make sure that my mental health issues don't get compounded by those of my various partners.

This time, the depression was a direct result of grieving what I felt was a perceived change in my relationship with Birdfriend. While things have been shifting this year between us, something happened in the couple months directly after we came home from New Zealand. I'm not even sure what that "thing" was that changed. But we both felt it. And it got aggravated by me feeling left out and not supported with regards to my chronic pain and ability. And then my brain and the maelstrom of mad thoughts took over and things have been in steady decline between us for the past few months. To the point where it was painful for me to even think about Birdfriend. And I shut down.


Birdfriend has been very patient and trying to be supportive. But they have been very frustrated with me as well, and I don't really blame them for it. It's tough being partnered with someone who has mental health issues that cycle through being fine, and then NOT. And when I'm really not well, I push people away - including Birdfriend (which I can image has been painful for them). I know that my depression is tough on Bear too - he's dealt with the brunt of my darkness. However, trying to talk about depression when you are in it is next to impossible, hence the quote above. It's a Catch-22 type of situation. You know that dialogue will help things, but you are so deep in your head that you can't even see anything outside of yourself. Like the old saying, "can't see the forest for the trees." It's a really shitty place to experience life from, and sometimes I'm simply not able to shake myself out of the feeling.

Yep. Sometimes I'm doing the reassuring, and at other times, I'm needing reassurance.

This past week I've had a few very in-depth and difficult conversations. They were MUCH needed conversations, but still, hard to have. The first one(s) was with Birdfriend around how we both aren't really happy with the current incarnation of our connection and how to address that without "throwing the baby out with the bathwater." This conversation was a long time in the making, probably almost a year...and it was good to really check-in and be honest with each other about our feelings and how we can better hear, be with, and support one another. We are still trying to "land" this conversation as there is more discussion and negotiation needed in order to move forward. However, we are both committed to finding a way forward that works for us both. And I do have faith that we will find a way. Our relationship is one of the most unique, nourishing, expansive connections I've ever had in my life. And I value and cherish it immensely, as does Birdfriend.

Ah, pre-conversation jitters. How they make just starting a tough conversation all the more difficult.
The second conversation I've had this week has been with Yak. I realize that I haven't been writing much about Yak and my connection with her for the past few months, and I plan on writing something specific soon... Yak and I have been cycling through what feels like the same conversation for the past several months about how to conceptualize and evolve our current relationship. It was clear that we both feel lots of love and passion for each other, but that there was also a feeling of limitation on both sides. I felt limited in that I wanted to offer more to Yak, and she felt limited because she thought I was living from a place of hierarchical poly and thus, she couldn't have more from me. It took us months to finally figure it out and have a clearer conversation about it, and I'm so glad that we did figure out what the wrench in the works was because it was making us both kind of nuts. I know that more conversations with Yak are needed so that we both feel heard and are getting our needs met in and out of the relationship. And again, I have faith that we will find a way forward.

For my readers, I would like to clarify something. I don't believe in, nor participate in hierarchical polyamory. I think it's shit, frankly. I find that hierarchies make participants who are "lower in rank" feel less or even unimportant, can make folks feel like they have little agency in the relationship, and can make partners feel marginalized. I don't want my sweeties to feel that way. I believe in a more egalitarian soly-poly type approach to relationships (bordering on relationship anarchy). When I am with my partner, I am with them. I try not to look at my phone or message my other partners; I try and give them my full self in the moment; and I make space for them daily (messages, happy thoughts, making plans etc).

While I do have a primary partner in Bear, I sometimes don't really feel like I need the word "primary" to describe in my head what I feel for him. He's my spouse, and my husbear, and my partner. Birdfriend is my non-primary, but again, I feel like I could drop the "non-primary" and just call them partner. Yak is my lover, and that currently fits, but I'm open to changing the label if it no longer fits for us.

I'm going to close this blog post with a most excellent comic from Kimchi Cuddles:

Plenty of room in my heart for all three of my partners.

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