Today was my first day back on campus after my isolation period, and it was tough. An all around motherfucker of a day. But I held the line. Went back out in the snow to get groceries and do laundry after work, instead of collapsing in a pile and ordering a pizza. Gotta hold that line.
Was feeling very naked to the voices last night and today. Same old story. They come in, not hostile, just present, and I twitch and pull back, then feel bad/angry/ashamed of twitching and pulling back. I talked myself down pretty well, but man that shit gets old. Just gotta sit with it.
The parable of boy squirrels and girl squirrels: once, when I was an undergrad at Berkeley, I saw a boy squirrel chasing a girl squirrel around a tree. The boy squirrel got hung up in his own head, and flinched back a bit. The girl squirrel wanted him to keep chasing her, and reached for him with sympathy and love, letting him know it was OK. He swung at her. She seemed to say, “Oh…ok…” and wandered off sad and confused. The boy squirrel stayed fucked up in his head.
I thought about that for the next 20 years.
Sometimes it feels like god, or reality, shows me things I need to see.
Spent a bunch of cash on groceries, but I was out of everything, so that’s fine.
