My hands hurt. My head is full. My heart is confused.

I don’t do things because I want to hurt Noah. I do things for lots of reasons. The fact that I hurt Noah in the process isn’t the goal, but yeah it happens. How much do I need to not do what I want/need to do in service of Noah? That’s a complicated negotiation.

There’s a lot I need to agree to if I want to be considered in the exact same way.

Noah’s not wrong when he points out that he used to be more ok with poly because he was less enmeshed and I didn’t like it. I wanted more of him. So I need to act like I’m getting more of him.

An awful lot of what we like about one another is that we really see one another. There isn’t a lot of “Oh you’re so awesome!” without specific support for why we think that. We temper our positive beliefs with “And by the way you suck at _____, _____ and ______. Fix that.”

Neither of us desire being seen as better than we are. We are both fuck ups who want to fuck up less over time. That takes honesty and perception.

I don’t get that from anyone else and I know it.

If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say “Wow I really sucked” you aren’t trying hard enough. 18 months ago I was still willing to put my head down and grit my teeth through stuff that was hurting me that I didn’t like. I managed to get to a point where I can’t do that anymore.

I hope it is progress. I’m backsliding in other areas. Is it backsliding? I’m reverting and going back to tricks that worked well for a long time in different settings. I haven’t tried them much in a long time because they wouldn’t have helped. Did they help this time?

Yes and no.

God that’s hard.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Are we changing for the better? I hope so. We are talking about some things. Oh! And Noah has a therapy appointment scheduled.

We are trying.

Do or do not. There is no try. Oh fuck off.

How do you manage to do stuff without trying and failing a lot? I’ve never found a way. Is that a justification for fucking up? I kinda think being alive is the only justification that someone needs for fucking up. We all do it.