Sifting through the embers
Nov. 19th, 2014 10:11![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquill[formerly filtered to f]
The Season of Ashes appears to have burned me to the ground this year.
It's been coming for a while, so I was expecting it... and it feels more like the burned-out husk of my old life finally just fell over. That makes it a gentler transition, but no less thorough.
It hit while I was fixing dinner in Hayward. A sudden sense of disorientation, the same sort of feeling you get when waking up in a different bed. I was in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by people I didn't know, and I couldn't even explain how I got there. It wasn't amnesia -- my memory was fine -- but I had lost that underlying meaning to the memories. I had lost the context.
I went through this once before, alone in my room at UCSC. This time I at least grasped what was happening, so it was much less distressing... but I was still off-balance and deeply scared. I had lost my sense of self, which is the point of reference for everything I interact with. It's the emotional equivalent of a core dump.
I did tell Akien, who asked whether he should take over making dinner, and I said that having something to distract me was probably better. Cooking was familiar, and straightforward, and even before this it's been comforting to me. So I tried to still my shakiness, took a deep breath, and kept going. It felt rather like I had been running and suddenly the ground wasn't there under my feet, but I knew if I just kept running it should come back again.
So I made dinner for four near-strangers, which was actually a good experience; I fit in well, and worked well with them, and it felt comfortable. It was the sort of thing I feel like should have happened when I got housemates at college, but it never had. By the time we sat down for dinner, I had some of my confidence back, and I tried to keep my mind off the displaced feeling. Only time could work that out, and my best bet was to relax as much as possible, and take in that I was safe and with good people.
The odd thing about a mental state like that is that you still have all the information you've collected -- this person likes figs, that person gets cold easily -- but the environment still feels new. You know when you first visit a place, and you're looking around trying to get a sense of what it's like, and gathering your first impressions of the people there? A death of identity event like this resets everything to that point. I trusted that anything that happened in that house was probably going to be good, so I relaxed and tried to take it as it came. The evening was similar to a few others I've had there; I even settled down with the harp when everyone else was off doing their thing after dinner, and I was able to drop into it more thoroughly than usual. I rediscovered Akien and Leah during the evening bedsports, and listened as Akien read to me afterward, and I ended up reassured. It was different, but it was good, and I was happy.
By the time Akien asked where I was at the next day, I explained that it felt like I had woken up one morning and discovered that someone had moved house on me overnight and not told me. All my stuff was there, but the apartment was different. I still had everything I needed, and I felt like I could still do things like make breakfast, but all the appliances in the kitchen were different, and it was on the wrong side of the hall. Unnerving, but not really alarming.
Sitting here now, a day later, I still have this vagueness when I try to touch base with who I am. I have history, and skills, but at the center of that is sort of a big ball of undefined stuff. I am at a point where I not only get to choose what direction my life goes in, but what person I want to be -- not in an incremental sense, as you get most of the time, but in a wholesale package sort of way. It really is like a Timelord regeneration, where you have the same basic building blocks of motivation and morality, but you can shuffle their priority and apply them differently. I could choose to focus myself outward rather than inward, or decide that getting people to connect is more important to me than educating them. The key is that while my answers to "What do I want?" were clear last week, they've been wiped away now, and I can no longer say whether I enjoy performing in public, or working with children, or creating impractical but beautiful pieces of art. These are the things I will need to decide over the next few weeks and months, and the answers will help determine my path from here on.
At least so far I seem to be in a far better situation than I have been, and I have more opportunities to be happy. I have more support if I want to reach beyond my previous bounds. I have more family than I had a decade ago. These are all good things, and I hope I can do more now that I have them.
"Change the world." It seemed like an impossible instruction three years ago. Maybe now I've got the leg up I need to actually do it.
The Season of Ashes appears to have burned me to the ground this year.
It's been coming for a while, so I was expecting it... and it feels more like the burned-out husk of my old life finally just fell over. That makes it a gentler transition, but no less thorough.
It hit while I was fixing dinner in Hayward. A sudden sense of disorientation, the same sort of feeling you get when waking up in a different bed. I was in an unfamiliar house, surrounded by people I didn't know, and I couldn't even explain how I got there. It wasn't amnesia -- my memory was fine -- but I had lost that underlying meaning to the memories. I had lost the context.
I went through this once before, alone in my room at UCSC. This time I at least grasped what was happening, so it was much less distressing... but I was still off-balance and deeply scared. I had lost my sense of self, which is the point of reference for everything I interact with. It's the emotional equivalent of a core dump.
I did tell Akien, who asked whether he should take over making dinner, and I said that having something to distract me was probably better. Cooking was familiar, and straightforward, and even before this it's been comforting to me. So I tried to still my shakiness, took a deep breath, and kept going. It felt rather like I had been running and suddenly the ground wasn't there under my feet, but I knew if I just kept running it should come back again.
So I made dinner for four near-strangers, which was actually a good experience; I fit in well, and worked well with them, and it felt comfortable. It was the sort of thing I feel like should have happened when I got housemates at college, but it never had. By the time we sat down for dinner, I had some of my confidence back, and I tried to keep my mind off the displaced feeling. Only time could work that out, and my best bet was to relax as much as possible, and take in that I was safe and with good people.
The odd thing about a mental state like that is that you still have all the information you've collected -- this person likes figs, that person gets cold easily -- but the environment still feels new. You know when you first visit a place, and you're looking around trying to get a sense of what it's like, and gathering your first impressions of the people there? A death of identity event like this resets everything to that point. I trusted that anything that happened in that house was probably going to be good, so I relaxed and tried to take it as it came. The evening was similar to a few others I've had there; I even settled down with the harp when everyone else was off doing their thing after dinner, and I was able to drop into it more thoroughly than usual. I rediscovered Akien and Leah during the evening bedsports, and listened as Akien read to me afterward, and I ended up reassured. It was different, but it was good, and I was happy.
By the time Akien asked where I was at the next day, I explained that it felt like I had woken up one morning and discovered that someone had moved house on me overnight and not told me. All my stuff was there, but the apartment was different. I still had everything I needed, and I felt like I could still do things like make breakfast, but all the appliances in the kitchen were different, and it was on the wrong side of the hall. Unnerving, but not really alarming.
Sitting here now, a day later, I still have this vagueness when I try to touch base with who I am. I have history, and skills, but at the center of that is sort of a big ball of undefined stuff. I am at a point where I not only get to choose what direction my life goes in, but what person I want to be -- not in an incremental sense, as you get most of the time, but in a wholesale package sort of way. It really is like a Timelord regeneration, where you have the same basic building blocks of motivation and morality, but you can shuffle their priority and apply them differently. I could choose to focus myself outward rather than inward, or decide that getting people to connect is more important to me than educating them. The key is that while my answers to "What do I want?" were clear last week, they've been wiped away now, and I can no longer say whether I enjoy performing in public, or working with children, or creating impractical but beautiful pieces of art. These are the things I will need to decide over the next few weeks and months, and the answers will help determine my path from here on.
At least so far I seem to be in a far better situation than I have been, and I have more opportunities to be happy. I have more support if I want to reach beyond my previous bounds. I have more family than I had a decade ago. These are all good things, and I hope I can do more now that I have them.
"Change the world." It seemed like an impossible instruction three years ago. Maybe now I've got the leg up I need to actually do it.
no subject
Date: 2014-11-19 20:06 (UTC)