Well, hello there!
It's been a year since my last post. I had marked it on my calendar to see if I felt like doing an update post a year on, and when I saw it today, I thought "why not?!" I do occasionally miss you guys—after all, you were my REAL internet friends—and sometimes I still lurk, even.
Many things have changed for me in the past year.
Rider didn't really want to be friends with me after we moved into separate places. He also kicked me out of the band. I've become pretty estranged from my former bandmates as well, even with the longstanding friendships involved. That all still stings even with nearly a year of patina on it, but I keep busy enough that I don't dwell on it.
Oona (who remains friends with him) told me at some point that he feels like I deceived him, like I pretended things were true that were not true in order to get particular reactions from him. I mostly feel a sense of dissatisfied resignation about that. The love I felt for him was real and intense—I never faked a thing—and that it turned out not to be right for me was not for lack of trying on my part. I chronicled here in excruciating detail every painstaking bit of care I put into trying to make that thing fly, and if he wants (or needs) to believe it was all a ruse, then I have no business trying to change his mind.
On a happier note, Dustin and I are still together. I've quit drinking completely, and he's working with a professional on a moderation program that is a really good fit for him. So far, it is going well. He seems enthusiastic about it and has learned a lot. We had a pretty typical-for-this-journal year of super-high highs and a couple of very spaced out breakup-level lows while we figured this all out. I took the steps I outlined here, of first involving his family and then helping him find a professional. I also attended some Al-Anon meetings, but they ultimately didn't feel like home to me.
I would say that he and I are probably on a solid path to where having offspring will make sense in the next year or two, which is a good thing because I'm staring down 38 later this year. We both still really want that, even as we realize that it will likely mean leaving the city eventually. I would describe our current and usual relationship status as disgustingly, blissfully happy with each other. He's still my "everything," and the feeling I get when I'm with him is like nothing else makes as much sense in the world. We just fit, and in the absence of the booze, everything between us is effortless.
I sometimes think back to that moment in fall of 2017 when I felt so troubled by my entire predicament that I was bordering on suicidal, and he and I took mushrooms and climbed that big, rocky hill in the desert. We watched the full moon rise while a raucous wedding happened down below, and there was just this feeling that on some level, in some dimension, we are soul-married, no matter what, no paperwork required. Even though I was actually married to someone else. Even though we had problems. Something in me just screamed "always" and "for better or worse"—and it kept doing that even when it actually
was worse. Even when I saw him blind drunk, ranting and tottering, even as
furious and scared as that made me. There was just an overwhelming sense of "this person is mine, and I will not abandon him when he needs me the most." Even during the times we broke up, I couldn't shake that feeling of being "his" and he "mine."
And so it remains.
He's evolving. Sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly. A lot of the things about him that used to give me pause—the somewhat ideological backwardness, the lingering rockstar cavalier attitude about women—have evaporated over time. It's like his heart has become more open and less bitter, and with it he walks more in the light.
And speaking of evolution, boy howdy, let me tell you about
me!
I've decided on a career change, hell-bent on one of the helping professions. I still work full time, but I now have a semester and a half of undergrad-level classes under my belt, a new grad school picked out, and several different volunteer gigs I've been juggling. When the booze-vapors cleared out of my life, I suddenly awakened to how fulfilling a life of service is. And so now that's pretty much all I do. Nearly every moment that I'm not at work, I'm either helping others or learning how to do it better.
I've been networking, making excellent grades, and making people's lives better. And life has been rewarding me with one cool opportunity and coincidence lining up after another. Since I found my path, I am like an arrow loosed from a bow: moving a million miles an hour directly at my target, and everything seems to step out of my way on its own.
Even oft-critical Oona, who was skeptical a year ago when I said I was the best me I've ever been up to that point, now says that she's seen me grow more over the past year than during any stretch of our 20-year friendship.
I no longer feel like a robot or an alien. I've discovered what it's like to sense and understand my own feelings before they rise up out of nowhere and hit me like a freight train. I've learned how to listen to my little inner voice and let it be the main thing that guides me and the only final decision maker. I now TRUST MYSELF. Which, I don't know if it came through in this blog before, but I never really did before.
I was always doing trial and error instead of being guided by an inner light. And I was always second guessing every decision or feeling or step that I took. I don't do that much anymore. Of course, I still make mistakes, but now they are mostly small oversights that I can take as learning experiences.
I've also had some pretty intense...I guess you could call them "spiritual" experiences (though definitely still not religious). Healing super old trauma that I didn't realize was in there. Moving through stuck grief that I did know was in there but couldn't access. I think that is what actually shook my emotions loose—that and not drinking. It seems to have improved my relationships with family too. Also, though I wouldn't have thought it possible, this healing even made my sex life better!
I cannot overstate the awesomeness of this—I'd always thought I was doomed to be slightly sexually defective: struggling with staying present vs. needing fantasy; libido starting to fall off as NRE waned; not being able to get off except in a particular position. Let's just say that none of that is a problem anymore.
I guess I really cleared out the old closets and made space to let some light in.
I'm also over $10k less in debt than I was this time last year! And that is even after moving three times in the space of a year (ugh), getting divorced, paying for classes, and plunking down for an international trip I'm taking next week. So my new money skillz are paying off too. I live in an apartment with two girl roommates, so that helps with the money too.
So that's where I'm at: great relationship, making new friends, kicking ass in school, rocketing down a new career path (while still paying the bills with the old job), and healthier relationships with family and remaining friends.
My life is overall pretty sweet, and I have an inner peace, fulfillment, and contentment that gets me through my super-busy days. I think I've finally struck the balance between being motivated by the amazing future I'm aiming for, but not being stressed out that I haven't met my goals yet. It's a process! It's a journey! I am where I am...and where I am is pretty good.