In the last year and a half I have solidified my relationship with the person that I was seeing in January of 2013 and we are going on two years in a couple of months. I have struggled with severe mental illness and I have stepped back from playing roller derby. I have also gained a significant amount of weight and have been trying to deal with how that has impacted me and my self esteem.
Finally, I feel like I am at a place where I am starting to like and maybe even love the person I am becoming. I have a regular course of meds that I take for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder (rapid cycling), and PTSD brought on by the decade long abusive relationship that I was in prior to my divorce. My current partner loves me despite my flaws 9that he doesn't even seem to see sometimes), frequently tells me that I am wonderful or beautiful, and we have continued to find peace with our very different sexual orientations. And now I am coaching roller derby instead of playing and it is something that I really enjoy. I would rather be playing (of course) and I have been getting back on my skates so that gives me some hope that eventually I will turn left and hit bitches once again. And I know that getting back in shape for derby and playing derby will help me lose weight so I am trying not to stress over my weight too much. I have not however been gymming it up because of 50 work weeks. That plus derby is a lot and while I am able to do it and have kept up with it for a bit now, I haven't added in the gym yet because I want to make sure that I can keep myself together and not get overwhelmed by everything in my life. I have learned that sometimes I need to and I have to choose to take care of myself first. And sometimes that means not going out (even to the gym) and I will miss out on things, but my mental health and being able to stay stable are far important than trying to experience everything and burning myself out.
So much has happened that I honestly do not think I can write it all down to chronicle things, but my life is getting better. I still struggle with my reactions towards things like loud exclamations of emotion coming from my SO even when they aren't directed at me It was pointed out to me recently that for out first 6 months together (we moved in together after roughly a month) he had to self censor quite a bit because any out of band reactions like frustrations at a video game or whatnot would cause me to shrink back and sometimes even panic because my ex was verbally and emotionally abusive to the point that I expected to be blamed for everything and I was terrified. Now I can generally perceive that those frustrations are not directed at me nor are they my fault. I still tend to jump if I am nearby; we were both in the kitchen recently and he burnt himself while holding a knife. The result was a cry of pain and his reaction to having the knife was to stab it point first very hard (and loudly) into the cutting board because that kept him from throwing it as a reaction to pain of having burnt himself. I was absolutely shaking in fear and the reaction was so automatic that I couldn't do anything else. But after a moment for me to realize that he wasn't upset at me, he wasn't hurt, I wasn't hurt, and that everything was OK thins were better. I got a hug and calmed down quickly. There was a time when that would have sent me crying in the other room for probably a half an hour. So progress. And not just in that area.
I have become more comfortable with my own sexuality and with talking to my SO about what I want and/or need to be satisfied and happy. We hit a rough patch not long ago and things got really weird one night and caused a definite disconnect. It left both of us feeling upset and made me feel very alone for a bit. But we talked about it several times over the course of probably a week and were able to work through the problem. There was a time when I wouldn't have been able to have such serious conversations for more than a few minutes without crying and being unable to keep talking. We spent most of a Saturday talking not long ago. And we both feel that it has made us closer to have talked about it and we will keep talking because the disparities between us mean that we have to keep talking. It is getting easier too and that makes me happy.
I don't know how often I will write here honestly, but I wanted to provide an update just because it feels good to realize and make note of the progress I have made. Here's to the future...
R
