Morning, after the break-up, it's still dark outside

Some thoughts and observations the morning after breaking up with Penelope. I've still got a lot to process, but here's where I am right now.

1. I had no trouble getting out of bed. There were a few minutes of confusion and a few minutes of grief, but I found myself jumping out of bed, dressing, making the bed and getting right to the zafu.

2. I could not have meditated enough. I think I will do another sit today, probably this afternoon.

3. I feel a resolve I have never felt or at least have not felt for a long time. It makes me carry my grief around with me, but still not resist the things I gotta do. It makes me want to get those things done in swift dispatch, then carve out a big chunk of time in the afternoon to deal with the pain. That seems unusually sensible. I hope this lasts.

4. For some reason, The Spirit of Radio is playing in my head. Or was playing in my head: I'm listening to it on Spotify right now. It played in my head when we temporarily broke up last week. Thinking about it, hearing it in my head, makes me feel very sad. Actually hearing it makes me feel good.

My favorite lines: "All this machinery making modern music / Can still be open-hearted. / Not so fully-charted, / it's really just a question of your honesty - yeah, your honesty." I love Rush.

(Is my subconscious trying to tell me this break up is a question of my honesty? That I can still be open-hearted?)

5. I feel like it's all been a huge mistake, my behavior in the relationship and the way I live my life. Both are wrapped up in the same problems, the same tiring complications. To be more specific, I think I rely too much on what makes me feel comfortable, and this lowers my awareness, lowers my level of responsibility, lowers my level of engagement. In relationships, it makes me "frigid" and sleepy. In my life, it manifests as a hunger for distraction.

6. I want to say to Penelope: "I'm ready now. I see through the veil of illusion I've been spinning for myself, and I'm ready to truly see you. Let's try again." It might not be true that I'm ready, and, also, I need to accept that some damage has been done. I can't hit a reset button. It makes the awareness less real. I need my experience of this loss to be very real right now.

7. NoVideo was a good idea (it's over now), but I really learned that watching video is not as injurious in itself as I thought it was. It's what I was doing with it. I was kind of doing it as a response to the pseudo break-up last month, as a way to regain my power and really salvage the relationship. I needed to do far more than just not watch videos. In fact, though it made me more productive in my personal projects, it seemed to not effect the relationship much at all. That doesn't mean, however, that watching videos is very valuable and worth defending.

8. This year went by fucking fast. Fast. It astounds me that I've lived in Albuquerque for over three months now. It blows my mind. That Penelope and I were together for a year, and one quarter of that time was this weird, non-time here. Where am I now? Where does that leave me?

9. Today feels like the real New Year's day. I feel a sense of closure and transition (obviously). Oddly, I'm going to the same sweat lodge ceremony tonight that I went to a year ago, the day of my first date with Penelope that went so well. That saddens me.

10. I look back at my relationship in two confusingly contradictory ways. Almost as if it's two relationships. There's the honeymoon period we had; it lasted about 8 months. Then things got not so great. I'm comfortable breaking up with the relationship of the past 4 months. I'm grieving for the relationship of the first 8 months.

11. A part of me feels that all this intensity of feeling surrounding the break-up is the catalyst that could finally make our relationship work. That it proves there's passion. That I know what the problem is now, and if we just tried again, we could make it work. I cannot say 100% if that is realistic or not, but it is not likely to be realistic. It's a manifestation of grief. Although it's interesting to note that I'm feeling multiple "stages" of grief at the same time. This kind of bargaining is also what happens after every argument I've ever had with a girlfriend, every conversation I've had with a girlfriend about how the relationship is not going well. And it has never resulted in success.

This part of me wants to say: "But it's different now!" It's always been "different now." To really make it different now, I need to really know how to see realistically what is a feeling that sticks and what is an emotion in the moment. I'm bad at telling them apart (as are probably all people), and I can't say that I can. Therefore, I don't know that "it's different now."

Even though it really, really feels that way. Which is not a bad thing. If it's truly different now, it should carry me to a higher level of functioning and awareness that is good for myself. I can at the same time let go of Penelope and work to a point of functioning that would make our relationship better.

It still hurts though.

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That'll be all. More to follow when I feel like it.