Echo, echo, echo....

"I'm not being clear." He says, and he looks frustrated for a while before he turns to me and says that he's going to bed.

We were having one of our conversations that winds its way through a hundred topics but always lands on one of the places where we fundamentally disagree. And then we get stuck there. And there's no satisfying way to resolve it.

I'm sick of arguing with him, fighting with him, or even just talking with him, because it never ends in a way that's in any way satisfying. When we argue, we don't even learn from each other anymore-- it's the same tired steps to the same played out dance. When we fight, we can't find a middle ground that gives us respite. And if we're having a conversation that's neither one of those two things, then one of us is probably boring the shit out of the other. He's talking about football or Magic Cards or skiing, or I'm talking about work or Zack or how unhappy I am.

Neither one of us ever backs down from anything. Neither one of us ever really relents. I get angry about things he disagrees with me about, and he gets condescending and self-righteous.


Things have been tense lately because work has been tough, and, at home, our free time has been severely cut into by cleaning the house for an inspection from our landlord that happened today and lasted all of five minutes. So there's that. I've also had, I suspect, some hormonal surges related to my period, though they really haven't seemed as extreme as years past, owing, in part, to this horrible birth control implant in my arm which seems to have leveled off the back-and-forth of my hormones with flooding me with waaaay too much of just the one...but that's a rant for another day. So there's that. All of this has left me without the time/will/peace of mind to meditate (and yes, I get that that's exactly when you SHOULD be focusing on meditating), so that has thrown me out of the Zen I was slowly building for myself.

So, yes, I know that this weekend was a little atypical in the serenity department. Still, I think the basic problem is that there's not enough goodwill between us to create a buffer: I am not getting what I need from him in order to afford me any patience. He feels attacked to often to not be defensive.


I have these goals now that are supposed to be about working towards some sort of improvement...of my situation and of ours as a couple. But the list of priorities has gotten totally muddied: exercise, meditation, writing, intimacy. You can probably trace them through the process of going from clear to utterly incomprehensible. And by now, it's clear that the only thing I'm on track at all to do is to get to my thirty days of entries.

Which, you know, is a nice idea. But what does it really get me? Unless these entries start becoming heavily laden with life-altering epiphanies during the home stretch, I doubt this little exercise will have done any more than dust out a few cobwebs.

And yet, I guess I do it because I have to, because it's part of me. Otherwise, each of these entries would be the two paragraphs that I actually intend to force myself to write when I finally force myself to open the laptop before bed, and no more. And yet, see how they grow.

So, maybe the cobwebs are blocking something that needs to get unblocked? Or maybe the sound and the feel of my fingers on the keys is more meditative for me than mediation itself. Writing mindfully would, I think, be a bit hard for me-- the idea of mindfulness being that you focus on the here and the now and any thoughts that pass through your head have no judgements attached to them-- but, I don't know. Maybe what I'm doing is close enough?

I hear the words in my head as I write them. Maybe I am being mindful in focusing in on that sound.

Nope, on second thought, that is not is not it. If I try to actually listen to the voice as I write, it gets really off-putting really fast. Oh, hi me? How are you? Echo, echo, echo...


So. Writing every night is not a priority in 11 more days. But what is? Is meditating, to gain the ability to focus and quiet my mind more beneficial to my relationship, by giving me patience and calmness and, somehow, understanding? Or is it more important to exercise, so I can feel good about my body and get the endorphins flowing? There's this whole process I could start working on in order to develop intimacy-- which is probably not at all what you're thinking, but I'm not going to share. Should that take precedent, since the missed opportunity of having sex every weekend throws me off of my priorities? Or is the body confidence a better route to that? What about the quieted mind thing? Surely, intimacy would be easier if I could actually relax...

I don't know how to stop this carousel. I know that I'd probably be better off if I picked one and stayed with it for a while.

For the next 11 days, I can feel alright it I manage to get this done-- I mean, not good, not even better, but...like I did one of the things I said I would, anyway. After that, we'll see if something else manages to fight it's way out of the crowd and distinguish itself as the next priority. Maybe that's a fight I'll be able to tolerate, unlike all the other ones around here.


Day 19. On with it.