tamerterra

Please don't refer to me by my IRL name on here. It weirds me out, and I don't like it. It's fine to refer to me by it when telling IRL anecdotes, but please not attaching it to my username?

I know it can be worked out from not-much sleuthing, but that's rather so that anyone I do know and like can find me easily, whereas googling my name wouldn't turn me up instantly.

If you do want to use a first name, rather than tamerterra, then 'Tamar' is what I've been using for however many years I've been on LJ.

Probably the least offensive sort of ill is the sort of ill that makes you feel incredibly hungry (but at the same time, sort of queasy, possibly due to how hungry you are). I've had three 'meals' so far today, and Dave's cooking another one (for the three of us, this time) now. Also, very very tired, in the 'can't follow a sentence without trying way more than usual' sort of way. Brain tired.

Probably I'm just lacking some nutrient or other and my body is sort of going 'ha, ha, I know the proceedure for this!' and making me crave All The Things like when I was iron deficient (I actually had dreams about eating and cooking steak and dark chocolate and brocolli, sometimes all together) until it works out what food helps most, and then I'll just keep craving more of that thing. Or I could have accidentally ingested some wheat recently, and my body might be trying to work out what the fuck that was.

So far I've had pasta with cheese and pepper, and then some curried mackeral and crackers from my larp-event stash. I'm looking forward to lentils and mashed potato soon...

Successes of the day: going outdoors to read a book, doing a couple of 20/10s of Unfucking My Habitat (there was a lot of stuff that just needed to be in different places), the washing up, locating almost all of the sewing things ready to pack up. Also, wearing a dress. Now I just need to keep Doing Things, and there will be convention soon!

Also located some lovely purple faux-satin (I think), and really want to construct something soft and pretty from it...

( My dayCollapse )

I seriously am feeling a lot better these days. I don't know if it's that my health is actually being managed properly now and that my medicine is at an effective dosage, cutting down on existential angst by having a relationship that makes me feel secure and saying 'screw it' to the idea that I need to justify my presence on the planet, or a combination, but-

( I Am AngryCollapse )

It shouldn't have gotten to that point. I was being monitored, being seen once a month and asked questions and sent on my way with the same perscription because everything was 'pretty much the same, tired all the time, skin-picking, yeah'. I'd forgotten what it was like to *not* have constant low-level depression running alongside everything else about life, and so I didn't have the words or experience to describe my symptoms because I didn't have a 'normal' baseline to separate them from - I would descibe my capabilities, knowing that I should be able to do more and hoping that the doctor would be able to identify the problem, hoping he'd do something other than shrug when I asked what was wrong with me, but that never happened. My bloodwork was normal, after all.

Now I have something to draw on when talking about how I feel. It's been amazing - so much of that energy suck is just *gone*. I'm still counting spoons, but if I over-extend myself (as we all do, occaisionally), I recover rather that spiralling. I'm volunteering for a charity. I'm making plans for the future, and making decisions that will define my life, because suddenly, I can - there isn't a mire of brain-yuck oozing over my feelings and thoughts and desires weighing them down and making them look unachievable. I don't feel like I have to justify my existance before I can start living my life the way I want to. I didn't even realise that I had felt that way until I didn't any more.

I learned and experienced a lot over the last five years due to being sick. I'm still angry that I had to. And it's a new feeling, to feel justified in being angry about an injustice done to me, rather than just afraid and resigned to it happening over and over again. But. I don't deserve to put up with bad treatment from the system. I don't deserve to put up with bad treatment from the system.

I don't deserve to put up with bad treatment from the system.

And neither do you.

There is a tendency to work from models built on assumptions and expectations when dealing with chaotic, many-variable, complicated systems like humans. That's not a controversial statement - people tend to interact with what they expect you to be doing rather than what you might actually be doing, and are often surprised when they notice the disparity, because that's part of how human minds make things easier for themselves.

In getting to know another human, one observes their patterns of behaviour until one thinks they know what to expect from the new human. If you become close to the new human, you keep paying attention to their patterns, and notice when they change, and ask them about their changes and their reasons for the changing, and discuss the observable things and sometimes non-observable things that happen inside their minds. Sometimes humans make statements about their changes in behaviour, and then other humans can observe what the speaking human wants them to think about their new behaviour, and add that to their own observations.

Sometimes the changes in behaviour are subtle, or involve not doing particular things rather than doing different things, and both of those sorts of things can be easily overlooked, or it can be assumed that the behaviour is continuing but out of sight of the observer rather than ceasing altogether. After all, once one has observed a human enough, one assumes that one knows their patterns, and that those patterns will continue whether one is still observing or not.

A long time after the change in behaviour, observers may realise that they have not observed behaviour that they expected for a while. Only a short time afterwards, they may assume that any deviation from their expectations is a fluke, but after a long time of consistent behaviour, their expectations of the human's behaviour will change, slowly, sometimes even so slowly that the observer doesn't even notice the changes in expectation - one day, they will be interacting with the human, and the human will be behaving in the way that they expect, and the way that they expect the human to behave is different than it was a year before.

Perceptions don't change in a week, unless large, obvious events force shifts in perception or re-evaluations of expectation. And of course, shifts to better regard a human are slower than to unfavourably regard them, as human minds tend to protecting themselves and retaining an unfavourable opinion counter to new observations ('that positive behaviour was probably a fluke') is less likely to result in harm to the opinion-holder than retaining a favourable opinion counter to new observations ('the human was observed performing a negative behaviour, indicating that the human performs negative behaviours').

Contrition, repentance, or shame following negative or harmful actions also effects the perception of observers - 'I wish I hadn't done that' or 'I shouldn't have done that' rather than 'I wish you hadn't seen that' or 'I wish you weren't reacting to my actions in this way' indicates that the human being observed regards their behaviour as out-of-character for them, or out-of-character for the character that they are striving to achieve - and that information is relevant to how the behaviour should be weighed in expectations of the human's future actions. A human that responds to criticism with denial or anger will be regarded less favourably by observers than a human that responds to criticism with consideration or understanding.

I want to title this post as 'girly-talk' but I think that that's part of the cultural problem I'm talking about - talking about contraception should not be a 'girly-talk' subject. Also, there's the infections side of using/not-using condoms, but I don't have any experience of being in a situation where one partner knows that they have an infection, whereas pretty much all of my sexual relationships have been potentially fertile.

( I just read an article titled 'Why do Women Always Have to be the Condom Police, Anyway?', and... This is a long post. My experiences, options for people with penises and people with uteruses, and surprise that more penis-havers don't find using condoms empowering.Collapse )


What are other people's experiences with this? I'm usually loathe to ascribe attitude differences in attitude to sex, but I do think that people are socialised differently depending on what society expects them to do with their reproductive bits, and it is obvious that there are different risks depending on what you're using.

The thing about depression is that it's a disease that doesn't ever really go away- and when it comes back, it can creep up on you such that you thought you were having a normal day, maybe a little tired, and then it's early afternoon and you're lying down on the sofa with no spoons to do the things you were meaning to do, and you can't dust the sad thoughts from your head.

I managed to sit up a bit and turn the laptop on again, but...

*sigh*

Not really anything to say that hasn't been said before.

My main feeling about the fallout of the recent drama seems to be 'annoyance'. I am annoyed by how things went down, and I am annoyed by how certain people seem to be on eggshells about it now. Very few things make me feel less grown up than feeling like I need to say 'I'm a grown-up, damnit, and I can handle some feelings'. So, I'm annoyed, and getting reminded about it is annoying. Decisions and actions matter more than feelings do, though the feelings inform the decisions and actions. Actions, unlike feelings, are observable.

( A thing that was really annoying - the monogamy smokescreen.Collapse )

I'm done with being a status-symbol-girlfriend, or an in-name-only girlfriend. Especially with exclusivity - there are things I require in a relationship, and affection is one of them. If a guy wants to be exclusive with me, he damn well better be spending at least most of his nights sleeping in my bed - I'm at least experienced enough to be able to see 'don't see anyone else, but I won't see you either' as the joke that it is.

I'm happy with my current arrangement - I can see it changing in a number of ways as time creeps on, but I'm fairly easy with regard to that. The optimal relationship-configuration for any number of people will depend on their individual needs and preferences, which is why these things need to be negotiated and talked about rather than assumed or guessed at. The Relationship Escalator isn't a given, but it is an option. Closed networks are options. Open networks are options. Living together is an option. Living separately is an option. Having kids is an option. Remaining child-free is an option. Pursuing small happiness is an option. Pursuing big dreams is an option. But you've got to talk about it, or no-one ends up happy about the outcome.

Unless they're really lucky, I guess.

If your boyfriend starts regularly using someone else's favourite moves in bed and stops doing the things you like, he's probably moving on. Or just thinking about 'someone else' at the time, which is Bad Form and leads to The Mediocre Sex.

Not that we were having all that much sex towards the end - just enough for me to notice that something was off enough for me to want to talk about it. Heck, I keep coming back to that thing I said to Sam ages and ages ago and recognising how true it keeps being - that when I say 'we need to talk' it generally comes down to 'I want more sex*' in some way or another. I was feeling neglected in the affection-sense, as well as shut out from whatever was going through his head, and what it came down to was that he wanted to be with someone else instead of me rather than as well as me, but hadn't worked it out yet.


*Good sex, that is. Mediocre sex barely counts as sex. I may as well be wanking if his head is in the clouds. Okay, mediocre sex is a bit better than wanking, but not by all that much. (Also, I am outraged that Google Chrome doesn't thinking that 'wanking' is a word.) Also, 'sex' is a broad category that can include all sorts of things.


Sex isn't the most important thing ever, but I do think that it's a good indicator for the rest of the relationship - if a boyfriend can't be arsed to have Good Sex with me (in a relationship that generally includes sex, which not all of them do), he's probably not arsed to do much else in the relationship, either. Thinking of various past relationships I've had, the sort of sex we were having does bear relation to the reasons why we broke up.

"Also: My grandparents have been married for almost 65 years, and my grandma said the secret was having someone you could talk to, about anything, because looks will fade, and when your child dies, and you have to raise your grandkids, and you lose your home in a hurricane, you won't give any fucks about how fuckable your partner is. You will only care about them being beside you.

"I may have paraphrased at the end there. My grandma is a church lady and wouldn't say the naughty word. But you know what I mean."

Quoted for all the truth.

*sigh*

[Original Five Geek Social Fallacies]
Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil
Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am
Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All
Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive
Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together
And a #6: Anyone Who Doesn't Like Me Is Jealous

[Geek social fallacies of Sex] - which I'm not going to just post the summary of, because everyone should read it, OMG.

...okay, I will, because I know some people are link-phobic.

GSFS 1: People can voluntarily control their emotions about sex.
(Important side-point: But that you can control how you express your emotions is not a fallacy.)
GSFS 2: The weirder your sex, the more enlightened you are.
GSFS 3: Cool chicks don't worry about sexism.
GSFS 4: Drama is always worse than the thing the drama is about.
GSFS 5: Sex should be no big deal.

Additional bit of wisdom: Expecting things to stay the same is stagnating. Relationships are always at least a little bit dynamic, even in just a slow back-and-forth sort of way.

I am upset by the whole recent-love-triangle-fallout thing. I've been trying to be supportive and friendly and not blame him for falling out of love with me, or blame her for my boyfriend (now ex) wanting her and her wanting him back, but come on. He cheated on me, she helped him. She found out it was hurting me and just kept going, and at points has been angry with me for expressing upset. Even without the other stuff going on, I'm well within my rights to take a bit of space to work out how I feel, and apparently part of how I feel is 'Dude, you stole my boyfriend. Stop trying to pretend we're best-best-friends and nothing has changed!'

Yes, he wanted to be 'stolen', and yes, people aren't possessions, and yes, I want to be friends once I've worked out how big the part described above actually is. But there's a reason I haven't been able to say 'I accept your apology and forgive you' yet. Probably more than one. But I'm not going to be able to work out what I need if I'm constantly getting sucked back into the conflict and having a discordant tune played on my heartstrings. And getting attacked for saying that I needed that space makes me want to actually run away and not look back. (I got a text when I got back from social on Thursday. It wasn't pretty.)

I naturally tend towards being introspective and analysing (sometimes over-analysing) my actions and feelings and plans, and what I can percieve of other people's (though, I have been working on catching myself doing that with other people and just asking them what's going through their heads - doesn't help when they haven't worked that out, though). Having frequent intense interactions with people who don't think that much and just do what feels good at the time is kinda exhausting, and is leaving me with a huge backlog of things to process.

(Currently, the browser window of my mind is giving her a 'This program is not responding. Wait for it to respond, or close program?' message, and she's clicking things madly trying to get it to do something, and it's trying really hard not to crash the friendship but there's only so much it can take. I've asked her to stop clicking and let it catch up, and she responded by hitting the 'end program' button.)

I tried at numerous points to talk about stuff, and then to work out what they were trying to communicate with their vague shruggy gestures and maybes. This stuff is hard. I went to the Awkward Army Meetup in York yesterday, and had a chat with Tess from Aspie-soc in which we both went into 'let us use words and be absolutely clear about what we are trying to say to each other, and clarify when ambiguity is percieved' mode - and that was just to arrange to meet up again at some point. So refreshing and easy compared to the abortive communication recently! I've decided to keep myself in that mode when talking to Stephen from now on: 'I feel [a] and want [b]. To make this easier, I would like you to treat me like [c]. One way this could happen is if [d] happens at some point. You are under no obligation to participate in [d], but it would help me with [b] if you are okay with that.'

(Most recently: a = overwhelmed, b = 'things not being so weird and awkward', c = 'a normal person who is a tangential part of your social circle, rather than the strange unknowable creature known as 'the ex girlfriend' ', d = 'small talk about the weather or something'.)

Apparently attempting to communicate like that with the other person involved results in even-more drama-plosions, though, and I'm far too tired to work out another way right now. Maybe in a while, if she tries to reboot the program once the lag has been dealt with. I can't really engage with this in a meaningful way right now, and I've got to hold my own house up. Time is generally a great healer, and I think I have to appeal to that for the meantime.

I find myself in need of more friends, as my circle has thinned itself considerably. At least picking people for Friday-night-Dominion will be easier now?

I still exist. Collapsed under the weight of held-back feelings and ill last night, but now mostly what I'm feeling is feverish and achy. Been drinking lots of redbush tea to sooth my throat and get fluids into me, and had a nap this afternoon pretty much immediately after me and Alex came back from a walk (while the world span around me, weee!) - walking (and eating lunch) was good, but also wore me out. I hadn't meant to have a nap then, but I sat on the bed and Alex brought me some more tea and I drank some of it and then I lay down and woke up a bit later with my dressing gown draped over my shoulders and my coat over my feet.

Alex is very sweet. And steadfast. I was feeling very 'all of my feelings have fallen out' after writing this morning, and wondered at him whether I should be in any relationships at all when I'm feeling like this and so hollow, and he just took my hand and held it and said that he was here for me.

The definitions of relationships matter a lot less when the people involved know why they're there, I guess. Also, 'relationship' doesn't have to mean 'romantic relationship', though those tend to be the complicated ones - I think that that might be by definition, seeing as romance tends to be the thing that leads people to move in together and try to build lives together. Friendship, romance, sex - you don't have to keep them separate, and you also don't have to put them all together, or even any two.

Oh. right.

I think I know what I want now, and what I want from who - for now. Relationships always shift and change, but of those three catagories, I think sex is the simplest - it's the only one that I've been able to add to a relationship and then remove later without anything changing in the long term. Most often I end up bundling romance with sex for reasons which I'm sure will be obvious to anyone I've been especially intimate with, but sex+friendship is also pretty damn nice - it's friendship, but you also know each other a little better because of what you've been up to with less clothes on. And I think romantic friendships are pretty awesome, too*, though I don't want to point anything out as an example right now - labelling that would be a bit crass, I think.

*so long as everyone involved is on the same page - I think a lot of teenaged angsty queer-girl/straight-girl one-sided 'relationships', including my own, started off as romantic friendships where only one half is gay enough to also want sex or kissing to be involved.

Actually, that just goes back to labeling in general - one labels to describe, not to pidgeonhole, but a lot of the time labeling gets misinterpreted (or correctly interpreted, urgh, humans) as an attempt to pidgeonhole. Humans like things to go in boxes - it makes thinking about them simpler. Not neccessarily more joyful, though.

I have one relationship currently that has romance starting to creep in. I'm happy to watch that happen, enjoy it, and not get ahead of myself like I have in the past. I've enjoyed what's come before this so very much, and I don't want to put pressure on it to be something it's not. I want to see what it will become.

I think I'm starting to get back to my old happy self from before the drama-fountain, with some new insights to take to my next challenges. I've still got a lot of stuff to work through, but right now I'm happy. Except for the headache and sore throat, but I'm going to go to sleep soon, and that will be a happy time. Mornings are always the hardest - by evening I can usually adjust to what the day has thrown at me, unless the evening throws more.

( Read more...Collapse )

TL;DR: I was stupid about this whole thing and didn't get a chance to correct my mistakes before more things had snowballed on top of them and buried them from my sight. My perspective on stuff got knocked skew by how upset I was/am, and my accounts of how things went should be taken as accurate wrt how I was feeling at the time of writing, but shouldn't be taken as an unbiased description of how things went.

Still TL;DR: I love them and hurt them too, so don't expect me to uphold the dominant monogamist narrative about this any more, because it's wrong and appealing to it doesn't make me right.

Still having Feelings, but trying not to let my angsting bleed over onto my other relationships too much. Not sure what to think about the fact that he's definitely not going to ask me back again, except that it makes things a lot simpler but also a lot sadder. I mean, there's been a lot of jerk-ish stuff lately, but also mitigating circumstances and happy stuff before that was an issue, and I was hoping that when that got better than everything else would too. Not to be. Ah well.

(Having different views of the longevity of the relationship was definitely a thing that drew out the drama, even if it didn't effect the outcome - I was treating it as a relationship with enough commitment and security that it was worth working on it during tough times, whereas he wasn't. It made us happy when it was good, but clearly it didn't make him happy enough to stick with when things were bad and there was a prospect of something different. Even when things were bad I thought he wanted me and to put the effort in when he was able, but.. Gah, I'm just making myself sad again now.)

Usual steps: Look at what I do have, and make the most of that. I've got two awesome people who say they love me in the romantic sense, and more in the chosen-family/friendship sense. I don't know what's going to happen in my romantic life now, but it does occur to me that starting relationships with sex as a focus is maybe not the best way to find someone to build a life with, and that it probably doesn't help with my insecurity that people only want me around for sex (which is rearing its head hardcore in the aftermath of all this). I mean, sex is important, and of course I want to have The Good Sex (TM) with whoever I end up staying with for the long run, but maybe I ought focus on the other stuff more first.

(There seems to be a bias towards being a straight childfree atheist in the people who are attracted to me, which is kind of disheartening as a spiritually focussed queer heathen who wants to have kids before she's middle-aged.)

I still want to move slowly with stuff right now - I'm not sure I could deal with more upheaval in my immediate circle after all the recent stuff. I am proud of myself for not flinging away what I'd built so far just because a guy was being insecure and indecisive, though. Just having one partner would be a bit terrifying - I'm scared of being too clingy and too needy, especially since accepting that I'm disabled, and being able to spread the pressure when one person is under too much strain means that I'm less likely to run away or try to withdraw from life to try to stop being a burden.

(Unfortunately right now pretty much my entire support network, including me, has either The Lurgy - which stops a person from breathing properly - or concussion, so I'm having to do my own caring. I can still cook for people, though, and doing that while surrounded by lurgy-zombies on folding chairs is good for distracting me from my own worries.)


Went to the shops today while it was still light, then made some tea and got out my dulcimer, but can't seem to make sounds that I like. Capoing it into a minor mode might help - the default is Mixolodian (Day), and maybe that's just too cheery for me right now. Luckily, Aolian (Winter) is easily capoable, as it's just on the first fret.

I have totally had sex like this week's oglaf before. It's really funny. Also fun. Not had anyone try to scoop it all back up like that, though...

I'm feeling the giddy-happy today. There have been some sad moments when I've been thinking too much, but I've people to distract me with shiny, so I haven't been thinking about it too much. Last night had a couple of eugh moments when I made eye-contact, but I mostly managed to avoid looking and focus on happy-making people instead. Also, leftover onion bahji-cakes for breakfast, om nom. I'll make some more tonight. :D

ETA: It's not really surprising that I'm finding it harder to be around him this week and this time than last week - last week, I'd laid it out, he'd picked (even reluctantly), and we were starting to move on. Even the Tuesday-evening-that-broke-me (with the mouthing 'I love you' at me and making me pay attention to the fact that he was with the person he'd dropped me for) could be dismissed as standard being-a-jerk-post-breakup behaviour. I was being a jerk then, too ("We're not friends! *melodramatic sobbing*").

But begging me back after that, resolving to make things better and try harder this time and taking actions that made it look like that was going to happen, and encouraging me to tentatively start to let my feelings out again, and then dumping me again over the internet before we'd even got to hang out and test the water? That hurt. That hurt a lot, and felt pretty malicious. I don't want to hang out with someone who does that to people, and I'm not going to want to interact with him out-of-character while that's my primary impression of him.

There was larp today, and it was awesome larp. Team AcatsAcatsAcats (now with the return of Sheska!) (we need a new name) finally had a payday, and then got to roleplay around being possibly-horribly-cursed. And used our signs! And all the other stuff that was earlier in the evening that I can't remember very well because it happened longer ago and I'm tired.

Also, it took a while for me to shift out from under the sadness-cloud from earlier (it took me until half five to get out of bed), but roleplaying is a very good way to shift that. I came to the session holding Alex's hand and barely putting one foot in front of the other and focussing on very few faces and mostly enduring the player room full of humans by diving on Dave or Alex or Kate or Dave or Bry for hugs when I started feeling overwhelmed, and then going back to doing things when I was calmer.

I don't remember much of the first part of the session because of that - I remember there was story-time and some Luxantine angst and treasure-hoarding and 'hey, look at this awesome thing I found!' (one of my favourite things to do in AoI bar sessions when things are getting slow is to have a phys-rep of something to wave at people and ask what they think of it and what they would do if they had it, and then give it away when I've exhausted the fun of that. I did it with my starting acats, I did it with the phlogeston, and today I did it with the crystal skull.) I think there might have also been politicking? Who knows. Acats!

(Or decats, now. Hee. Hmm, there was the Four Acats - do we now have the Three Decats?)

And now I am home and attempted to make onion bahjis rather than have takeaway at froth, but misremembered the recipe and put in eggs instead of extra water, so those are going to be weird when I get them out in a minute. Hope they're still edible - they'll probably be quite dry...

Edited to add: Om nom bahjis in cake mode!

Things can never go back to 'the way that they were'. Life is a story with conflicts and resolutions and character development, and returning to a previous point in the story would be unsatisfying. There will be times which echo the earlier times - but they'll be echoes and chimes and notes that are ringing out in their own time, with new significance and complexity and layered meaning from the history that they call to.

Things won't be the same. Hopefully they'll be better, with favourite notes and chords and chimes being repeated in the new movement without becoming stale or jarring or attempting to be the old piece of story.

The hero's journey involves a period of descending into darkness, being trapped in darkness, becoming lost and disentangled from what came before before being reborn better and stronger and wiser. I hope that this new movement of song and story will echo that idea and come out from this period of strife better and wiser and with a sense of what will happen next - but of course, the rebirth is not an event, but a process, a climb out of the darkness, and it must be seen to its end before one may see what has emerged.

We are still in the dark, becoming. But it is now a concealing darkness that allows possibilities - form is not burned by the light to be what it is, but can grow and change and become without seeming grotesque.

Still fairly blank in the emotions-sense, but Alex has made me some tea and I am looking forward to seeing people tonight. There shall be sweet potato. I like sweet potato. There shall be chatting and hugs. I like chatting and hugs.

And there will be sleeping in my own bed rather than on the floor, because even if I can't manage to sort out the sheets, I can have help in sorting them out. When you have a king-size duvet to wrangle, it can seem like a completely uncomprehendable task, especially when your brain is putting most of its RAM into emotions:sorting.

Me and Alex have been together for two years now. I am glad of this. We've gone from 'I just got out of a super-intense long-distance relationship, so this is entirely casual and I am not your girlfriend and if anyone says I am I shall berate them at length!' (ha) to cooking most of our meals together and it being entirely natural to go weeks without spending a night apart, through learning to talk about boundaries and wants and expectations and changes, signing the contract to move in together (and be jointly responsible for the rent and bills rather than having set shares) but spending two months trying to scrape together the spoons and time to get some furniture and actually move back in, and various other people coming in and out of our lives.

I love Alex. We've settled into a very comfortable sort of relationship now, but it's good and stable (though there'll be changes again when he graduates) and makes me very happy.

People who make one happy are in short supply sometimes. It's good to have some that stick around and that you can make happy right back. My feelings might be a bit muted right now because I'm too tired to feel them, but I am very, very glad for the people around me who are awesome and do things which make me happy. I hope to return the favour when I'm less walking around in a daze. :)

One of the lights in shining into my eyes. I'm stumbled and felt and been led, but in this confusion it feels like what's under my feet might be cracking. If I could just regain my night-vision... But I wobble and duck and weave, but the light is still in my eyes. What do I do now? I was resting, being helped along by helpful hands and careful words slowly in the dark, but now I've been found and it's too bright!

Ack! *hiding*