My words are starting to return a little bit. It’s been months. Goodness only knows how long it’ll take for them to be back to any kind of “normal” (for me) level. I think I wrote the quoted bit below about being wordless around a week ago.

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It’s funny how wonky time goes. Buried, wordless, hurt.

Because that’s really at the core of it all. Hurt.

Actions touched past traumas and everything just broke.

 

Balancing on the line between “okay” and “not okay.”

Daily, not-knowing which it’ll tilt towards.

What might tip it one way or the other.

 

Good day follows bad follows okay.

Back to bad. Meets up with sad.

Wordless all the same.

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And it occurred to me today that shattering completely, as I recently did during a huge meltdown, might actually be better than breaking just a little bit at a time. Because this has meant that I’ve needed to rebuild from the ground up, as it were. It affected pretty much every integral aspect of my life.

It was a complete shutdown once the meltdown was over. Meltdown two weeks? Shutdown a month? Time was weird so I’m not completely certain. I’m nervous to read the things I was able to write during the meltdown portion, but I’ll get around to it eventually.

Then it was a matter of adding things back in once I was able to. Reading was one of the first things. Finding books, reading them, drinking tea, lying on a heating pad under a blanket nearly all day long. Trying not to break again or any more. No talking.

The bad days were all there were for a long time. A good month or more before I had one that could be described as not-bad, although it wasn’t good either. It was okay-ish — I didn’t wake up wanting to die, so that was a start, yeah.

Then… after about a week of alternating bad days with okay days that teetered on the edge of not-okay, I realized I really wasn’t nearly as okay as I’d thought. All it took was being contacted by someone who had been only very slightly associated with my breaking and I couldn’t breathe, but I felt like I had to respond so I did. Probably poorly. I haven’t been okay enough to see if they wrote back yet. Nor even have I been okay enough to really think much about it at all.

But I was honest and it was the only thing I could manage so there’s that. If broken relationships result from this… at least I did my best. Not anything I can do about it anyhow but keep working on myself. Focusing on others brought me to the point of breaking in the first place and I’m loathe/reluctant to do too much of that until I’m feeling less precarious myself.

Two more teeteringly okay and not-okay weeks followed — the holidays. We did nothing extra during the holidays other than a project I committed to months ago and could do on my own while doing research at home, which was perfect. Taking factual notes was within my capacity and I did a pretty decent job of it, I think. It kept me busy and helpful in good ways.

Adding research and some family holiday things went okay.

Then I began to sort of be able to talk to Counterpart a little bit about some things. Not many, but some. We began spending more time doing nothing in particular out in nature. I realized what I need from him relationship-wise, which is something that’s never been more than hazily formed in my mind before.

And today I felt good. It’s one of maybe three good days I’ve had in several months now. I’ve not had many of those in the last year, if I’m honest. Maybe not the last several years.

Now I have a better idea of what I want my life to look like, what sort of people I want to spend time with, what I value in relationships, what sorts of things I want to spend my time doing, and I’m much more aware of my limitations than I previously was.

So I’ll keep adding things gradually, but not until I’m ready, and I don’t know how long this process will take. I have no idea. The next two months are ridiculously busy so it’s likely I won’t add anything else new or old until after the busy-ness recedes.

Because I’ve realized that if I try to force anything too soon, I’m just going to break again. That’s really all there is to it. And breaking again isn’t an option. I have to make it through the next two months.

At that point, I’ll face the fallout from last year. Head on. I wasn’t the only one who was hurt during the whole fiasco and I was gutted that there really wasn’t any way to make it better quickly, but there wasn’t. Isn’t. The whole thing is too damned complicated for a quick mend. Maybe any mend ever, but I’m trying not to go too far down that trail of thoughts.

Defeatist thinking won’t help, but patience will. No matter what is to come.