Sigh

So I've been having a bit of a rough time lately. The last month or so has been . . . well, 'confusing' is probably the closest I can come to putting a name on it. I'm not great at naming feelings, tending to find things either 'good' or 'bad'. And when things are feeling bad, I tend to hole up. Dig a figurative den for myself and try to hibernate. Usually this works well and my friends know that if I disappear for a week or so it's just me taking some time for myself.

They also know that after a week or two it's time to call me up and shake it out of me, whatever it is.

And that's what I'm trying to do right now. For you, my interweb friends. I'm trying to shake it out and shake it off.

Up until a few months ago, my life was relatively stress-simple. What I mean by that is that my stresses were limited to a few things, usually just work related stuff. The only time I had concerns about relationship stuff was when I was feeling sorry for myself and wishing I had someone to snuggle. Other than that, being single is fairly stress-free, emotionally.

Being involved? Not so simple. Because there's stuff involved in being involved. Thinking, wondering, emotions and feelings, ups, downs, in-betweens. Uncertainties, fears, hopes and all those things you thought you put away from your past that now show up again without actually being invited; oftentimes disguised as something else.

And all of this? Takes energy. Emotional energy. And my job? My work? It drains emotional energy. Super secret spy work is not all fun and games, my friends. It's a day in, day out kind of work that doesn't allow you to go home and leave work behind. You're always thinking about the next mission or the one that didn't go well or you're polishing your spy-gear and making sure you're caught up on the latest bio-warfare. And lots of nights lately haven't included the greatest of sleeps. Work's starting to talk about the possibility of re-structuring and of spies moving to different offices and I'd really just like to curl up for a few months if no one would mind.

And it's a busy time. Not a crazy busy crunch time, yet (OK, I have to pause for an aside here. I've got random music on in the background and I've just had two King Missile songs in a row and I'm feeling a heck of a lot cheerier. Go on.... download Sandbox and try not to smile.) but because it's not, I've taken on a bunch of extra things. I don't know why. Please don't ask. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

But I digress.

So, if we add on to the fact that work has me rather dazed and confused and sleepless, the fact that I've put myself in another long distance relationship, things start to seem a little overwhelming. And the kicker about this particular relationship is that someone's going to have to move. A long way. Which would seem ok, right? But keep in mind the fact that we've spent a grand total of 11 days in each other's company. How is someone supposed to move across the continent after 11 days with someone?

Well, they're not, obviously.

Ok. But. How is someone supposed to continue building a relationship where there is a four hour time difference and a flight costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars and both parties work? Plus? How is this relationship supposed to work when one of the perpetrators is kind of not good at being patient like everyone keeps telling her to be?

Which leads me to my confusion.

I'm not good at being patient and letting things happen and seeing where the flow will take me. Or, at least, I'm really not good at it when it comes to relationships. Really. Not. Good. But I'm also old enough and logical enough to know that neither of us knows the other well enough to pack it all up and move just to see what might happen. Sure, it'd be great if Smith'd do that, but realistically, his career is taking him elsewhere right now and I think he needs to follow that path. Especially since I can't make any promises and I'm not moving.

I just don't know. If he lived here, I still don't think I'd know. And that's good, right? I mean, I'm famous with my friends and loved ones for just rushing into a relationship without really knowing much about the guy and how we get along. When I think back on the fellows I could have married I'm happy things didn't work out in the end. So truthfully, I really don't know if Smith and I will end up together long term and that makes it very hard for me right now. I can not do a long term long distance relationship. It's not as if we started out locally and then he had to move for work. We started out far away. And it's hard. And it's too intense a lot of the time.

One of the things I struggle with is the large time difference. Four hours. That means that when I'm just home from work and settling from my day (you know, taking off the black cat suit and putting away the spy-gear) he's heading to bed. And by the time I feel relaxed and am wanting to pick up the phone and talk, it's 1 or 2 in the morning for him and he's already asleep. Most nights we end up talking between 6 and 8 my time which means he's heading to bed around midnight and getting 6 hours of sleep. And I'm feeling guilty about that. So I find myself either rushing to get home and ignoring the things I'd like to be doing so I can talk to him, or watching the clock to make sure I'm not keeping him up too late. Smith says I can call him anytime and that he takes naps during the day so we can talk later, but as someone who occasionally has sleep problems, I know how bad it can be to mess with your sleep schedule, so I'm not going to call him up at 2 AM just to say hi.

What I want more than anything is for him to live here. For him to have lived here since the beginning. I feel cheated out of a "real" courtship with dates and separate apartments and meeting friends and having time to ourselves. It was great when he was here last month; it was romantic and wonderful and intense but after it was all over I didn't feel what I thought I should. I didn't feel sure. I didn't feel like I knew all the answers. I just felt wary. And confused. And lost. And I wanted to pull away. From all of it. It was all too much with a sense of nothing behind it. It was honest and loving at the time, but almost meaningless once I was separated from it. I got back from my vacation and I had, literally, no recollection of our time together. My mind had somehow dissociated itself from everything I'd felt, as if it knew there wasn't enough background and time behind all the feelings to back it up. It was like my brain remembered all the times I'd rushed into a relationship without really knowing and didn't want me to do that this time. Which, again, perhaps is a healthy thing, but it hasn't felt great. And it was hard to turn around and have to tell Smith that.

To make things worse, I wasn't able to talk about it. Not with friends and especially not with Smith. The poor guy has had to deal with me clamming up and pulling back without being fully capable of telling him why. Without really even being fully conscious of what I was doing. Just knowing things felt wrong and I had to try to fix them. Sometimes I'm not sure why he's still around. (And then I remember that I'm awesome, and for just a moment it seems to make sense.)

Things still aren't great. I'm in a weird place, but I'm trying to move away from it. I'm trying to find a way to talk to Smith about it, and maybe babbling about it here means I'm closer to understanding what is going on in my brain right now. I hope so.

I know I haven't been around here much lately. There's not much worse than having a thousand things to say and sitting down to write them out and nothing comes. It makes it a hundred times worse. Emotional writers block I guess.

I don't know how to end this dis-jointed babble-filled post, so I'll just end it here: I hate feeling confused and I hate feeling stressed and overwhelmed. The only thing I hate more is change and I've got that going on right now too. It's been a bit of a month.

Know this much; I'm fine. I'm ok. I'm strong. But I'm not quite myself and I'm missing me.

So, for now, I'm going to head back to my den.

And I'm going to nibble on the chocolate Smith sent me in an Easter package.

Because he's just that good.

I'll try to be around a bit more, I promise. Until then, if you're jonesing for a read, take a look back through my archives. I love finding a blog and reading through the archives, so if you haven't already here, go for it. Start at the beginning; August was fun!




PS Sure wish I could reverse chronologize my archives. I hate opening August up and getting the 31st. That just seems... backwards.

PPS I'm not going to re-read this post right now, so advance apologies for editing that happens once you've already read it.


PPPS I think "chronologize" is an awesome word even if it's not really a "real" word. Reality is relative.