12/4/20—the other night (mon or tues?) R called me last minute to see if I wanted to go to like Pottstown or somewhere 1 1/2 hrs away with him to get the cap for his truck, I said yes right away because I like going on trips with him and also I wanted to help him do something that was important to him (his truck) and also spend time with him (he would be gone for so long if he went by himself) and also I didn’t want him to go by himself and be lonely. It was fun. After we’d been driving for like an hour, with 33 min. left on the GPS, he was like, “I hope I typed in the right address.” I laughed and was like, “I guess we’ll find out in 33 minutes” because I didn’t really care where we were going, as long as I was with him. the route reminded us of the trip we just took to Gillett PA for his bday—there were some stretches of farmland and some cows and it started looking “middle of nowhere” by the time we got to the guy’s place. R got his truck cap for free (found the guy on Craigslist) and the guy was nice and helped us put it on when he saw I had to put it down like 1 second after I helped R pick it up cause it was too heavy for me. I’m sorry to keep repeating myself but…I could stare at R forever.

Last night, R came home and saw his clamps had been delivered from Amazon, he wanted to go out right away before taking a shower to clamp down his cap to his truck bed so I went out to help him (mostly because I needed to get out of the apt since I’d been inside all day, but also bc I wanted to spend time w him and help him).  Again, like a few nights ago…I couldn’t stop staring at his face. while he worked. I think if I was a more…rational/logical/ideal person, I would ideally try to understand exactly what he was doing w the clamps and see if I could help him/anticipate his needs while he worked, because it seemed he was doing a lot of work with the clamps and tools and it was dark and cold out and maybe I could have done something to speed things along instead of just sit there the whole time. And I did try to do that- figure out what he was doing- but it was only like a few seconds and then I got distracted cause most of the time, I just couldn’t help staring and staring at him. At his face while he worked. staring at his body as he walks, as he moves.

This morning getting dressed, I didn’t feel like physically wearing the weight of all my rings on my hands (I have this promise ring I made for myself leading up to the wedding that I wear on my right hand, and then the engagement + wedding ring that R gave me I wear on my left) – usually I wear all three together but today I just felt like wearing “his” rings – the two on my left, but not the other one. So I did, leaving mine in the glass dish. And then I thought… like… sometimes when my promise/resolve is weak…I have his promise still, for strength. And when his promise/resolve is weak… my promise can be strong, and in this way…we’ll never fail each other. We’ll always…make up for what the other lacks. A thought like this entered my mind, and I felt it to be true. Like we don’t have to be 100 percent all the time strong if we can’t, because we have the other one.

12/1/20— we were all the perpetrators. it wasn’t just a single person, a few individuals. (thought while listening to audiobook Freedom is a Constant Struggle by Angela Y. Davis)

11/20/20— if I can tell my body to wake me up at four in the morning before I go to sleep, what else can I tell it to do? (before going to sleep last night, found out when R was waking up for work – it was 4:50 am. And it was not early when we went to sleep. Around 10 or 11. So before going to sleep, I talked to myself a little. I remember saying to myself like, “Look. you have 5 long hours, body, to lay here and rest—rest until your heart’s content—lay and do absolutely nothing. Soak up every minute, and then you’ll wake. You’ll have had enough sleep, even though ‘4 in the morning’ doesn’t seem like you will.” and I fell asleep…and I’d set my alarm for 4:24 am, but I woke up at a better time—around 4. Better cause I actually needed that much time to prepare his bday breakfast. I woke up naturally, on my own. And I never wake up at that hour—I KNOW it was only because I talked to myself before falling asleep. I usually wake later, maybe 7 or 8, or rarely, at 3 am to pee. But never four, until I consciously told myself to last night. So again I ask…what else can I ask of myself- my subconscious self- and it will deliver?)

R just said something tonight, like a half hour ago, that I’m still trying to grasp. idk why it’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around, cause it was a pretty simple concept – he said like “now you have someone who loves you no matter what. even if you get in an accident and your face gets fucked up or something, I’ll still love you.” idk why it’s hard for me to understand this concept. My best guess is that…it’s because maybe if my face got all fucked up, it would be harder for me to love myself. And so it’s hard for me to see someone else loving me despite a fucked-up face, if I can’t first do it myself. Or maybe because of stereotypes I hold in my mind about men in general. But the context in which he said it was: we were doing the nightly cuddle, and I was just thinking about how bad my skin was (having breakout currently) and I was thinking…that it’s almost better?/easier? to be alone when my skin is looking bad because then at least there are no witnesses. But if you are married/with someone and you break out…there is the added difficulty (from my perspective)of having someone witness the ugliness, and…to me, I never knew what a big burden that was to me—to have a witness to my perceived imperfections. It weighs heavy on me, I realize. I think maybe this is an issue I have to deal with: wanting/needing to be picture-perfect whenever he is present, and when I’m not (which I feel is like 88% of the time lately), inwardly somewhere getting deeply annoyed/frustrated. Idk where this concept originated in me, but I definitely have it ingrained in my psyche for some reason. So I was tearing up (while facing away from him) and sniffling thinking about all this and I think he heard it bc his face was like right on my head, but he didn’t press (which I was glad). And later when I relaxed more (after sex lol), I told him all I was thinking, and that’s when he said what he said about ‘even if your face gets fucked up or something…’

And when he said that – I felt a kind of relief somewhere where I didn’t even know I was holding tension. Truly. It was weird, like I didn’t even know I was hostage somewhere, until he released me with that response, with those words spoken sincerely in the dark. Then I looked back and saw that I had been really boxed in by something.  I think that’s what I’m trying to resolve within myself right now in the aftermath of what he said: that maybe I had been holding myself hostage in the…appearance department or something, like too much, for too long. Idk. something like that. Standards. Expectations. TBD. God, thank you so much for my husband. May he be the most blessed man in all the world.

11/21/20

“This is our life now noiva. truck life!” – R exclaimed, the first time we rode in his truck was today.

11/25/20— While thinking about how to heal my skin and what mental paths to take, could not think of many things for sure, but thought definitely this: I will not hate my body. Throughout this process, this journey from the pits of pain to all soft and smooth, I will not be grossed out, disgusted, dejected, discouraged, or loathe any part of myself, as much as I can help it. This includes the itching, the skin pain, the scales, the prickly feelings- anything about my body- I refuse to hate or treat as an enemy. I promise to treat her as a friend- a dear younger friend who I love and want the best for- and no matter what symptoms she displays, to do her good with all my heart, at all times, because this is a precious relationship: me to my body. I won’t harm the relationship by jumping to hate or revenge or conclusions. It’s a mental turning point for me, I think. that through one of the darkest times (though certainly not the darkest) no matter what, I approach and deal with every situation with as much love and joy and appreciation that I can. this much I know, at least. And I asked her to please lead me.

11/26/20— last night, R called the flyswatter a “slapper” (“where’s the slapper?”) when he was about to kill a fly after I flipped out about how there should not be a fly inside our place in the wintertime/global warming. And later in bed, he kept saying, “let me squeeze these butts!” to me while squeezing my butt and i was like “what??” and he still kept saying it like that. He knows the right way to say it I think (“this butt”) but he was just being playful. lol

11/15/20— my two best moments today: when the strong wind blew some stuff off a table at the flea market and R bent down to help pick them up off the gravelly ground as he passed and place them back on the table. The vendor lady thanked him. And later in the day grocery shopping, he saw some bacon he liked, but said he wanted to find some more humanely-raised bacon, he thought they were those options somewhere else in the store. And he did find them later and put that in the cart. both times i didn’t say anything, just kept holding his hand and walking along, but they really touched my heart.

11/17/20

“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

– Mexican proverb on Tim Ferris post https://tim.blog/2015/05/06/how-to-commit-suicide/

11/19/20—Just realized something about aging/time: things you never thought would happen to your perfect young body – happen.

what if…every morning, every day…you got up/thought as/washed face as/got dressed as/took walk /did chores/etc. as if…as if about to receive a gift. Expectant, confidently expectant. Since I heard this metaphor in Joseph Murphy’s book  (something w/”prosper” in the title I think), it’s been circling and circling round in my mind, I really like the idea: he says that you can go to the ocean with just a drinking glass and walk away with that much – you can go to the ocean with a gallon jug and walk away with that much and so on – but the point is that there is infinite amount to be given, and everyone gets according to their openness to receiving. I think that’s beautiful. Like, so beautiful. As soon as I heard this, I believed it. I feel like idk. Like I’ve already lived some of it.

11/8/20— “finally we’re home! I like to be home with my wife.” – 7:43 pm, just after we got back from being at mom and dad’s for a few hours, R said this

11/9/20—

“And the intention is, hopefully, to show that it is possible to find some light- actually incredible amounts of light- in the darkness.”

“And I just took one step into the future and told the truth. And that changed my life.” 

– from Tim Ferriss’ My Healing Journey After Childhood Abuse #464 podcast

11/10/20—thought I had tonight looking at R on the couch while he was texting our contractor: “I’m so happy I married him. I could go on forever like this.” I love every part of him. Every single fucking part of him from his hair down to his big toes. He’s the most boyish man I’ve ever seen.

Does being the most blessed couple in the world (as you pray for every night) really mean having no worries because of an ideal situation/environment? or does it mean despite the situation/environment, having no worries? Like does being most blessed mean: being the most wealthy, OR being the most resilient? And can you have both? (or is it impossible because the wealth makes you too comfortable? Can you have wealth AND focus on never getting so comfortable that you lose your edge/resiliency?)

I mean…wealth is definitely easier, I know. It’s just easier to receive money bc that eliminates a lot of problems. and to ease worry and problems, that is definitely a blessing.

and then non-wealth is harder. like it’s harder to work THROUGH things, without the crutch of money. You have to rely on things other than money. (what are those things you have to rely on?)

Is it more of a blessing to work through hardship, or to have wealth that lets you sidestep hardship?

(I can kind of already tell the answer for myself, seeing it written out like this.)

11/11/20— “synchronize your heart with your head. hold for four seconds. exhale.” – Adriana Ayales, during meditation

11/12/20—how does your body feel when it believes something completely with its entire being? what is that feeling? have you ever felt it? I think it’s important that this feeling is familiar to you.

11/2/20— “a hopeful break with the past.” –Kempis ‘Ghani’ Songster, To Defund or Not To Defund, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-it-forward/id1532219362

“we can go through any point in our history and point to what was ‘utopian,’ and then became reality.” – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-it-forward/id1532219362

11/3/20— tonight in bed putting R to sleep, I touched his dick with his shorts still on and gently squeezed and its resting shape just extra-delighted me for some reason so that I grinned and said to him happily like, “I’m so glad I have a husband and I can grab his dick whenever I want, and I don’t have to go on dates to grab a dick” and we laughed and he said he feels the same way about me.

11/5/20—“the body believes in images. the body will receive an image as if it’s a physical event.” – Robert Moss on dreaming

11/7/20— watching R nap on the couch tonight, this phrase came into my head: “easiest person to love in the world.”  Just the easiest. I was walking past him earlier tonight when he was making us dinner (plant-based burgers), and as I passed he asked if I wanted cheese on my burger (I said nah, cause I didn’t feel that hungry) and with the funniest lilt in his voice he responded, “Why not?” It was in this sad, drawn-out, puppy-dog, pleading tone of voice that he said “why not”. I immediately stopped, backtracked and went into the kitchen and pretend-slapped him and said, “Stop being so cute!!” and we were laughing. Sometimes he acts so cute that I feel almost like frustrated with life.

10/26/20— R kept laughing tonight in bed while I was putting him to sleep and I was like, “what?” and he was like “every time I remember that you put the sign there, I think it’s funny.” (I got a BLM sign from the march this weekend and I sneaked-put it on the lawn like right next to our apartment complex sign lol, so you see it whenever you turn into the complex. put it there last night, and still there a day later.) He elaborated that the placement— since it’s not like in front of our home or apt or anything- was kind of like a kid. I think he meant like a kid prankster kind of person, and that made me laugh. haha. idk. I just felt like it.

10/30/20— something that keeps happening to me now that didn’t happen to me when I was single or any other time: I keep finding my underwear/underwear in my pants/skirt/dress/stockings/socks around the house, unexpectedly when cleaning, like days or weeks later. Like stuck inside the couch, rolled under the blanket at the foot of my own bed or tangled in a ball behind his pillows and don’t remember taking them off (until I find them, then I remember). I am just usually very organized about the whereabouts of all my things. But I guess with R + sex, I can get forgetful. But…it’s a good kind of forgetful. And it’s interesting to not have control of every little thing anymore: every time I find another surprising clump of my own clothes somewhere (happens maybe a few times a month, for the past like 25 months we’ve been living together) I wonder, “who am I now?”

10/17/2020

“This universe- quantum physics has shown—this is a quantum cosmos. It’s quantum on every scale—the micro and the macro—and everywhere in between. In a quantum system, there’s no separate parts.” – author Paul Levy

“The ongoing work of trying to get free: there are parts to kill, and parts to reincarnate again and again.” – Imani Perry, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons

10/19/20

me and R’s last words to each other tonight before we went to sleep:

me: “i wonder what a ghost would do if you farted”

R: “I think he would fade away”

me LOL

(we just watched that Bly Manor thing on Netflix and were talking about ghosts and I was scared, but after that exchange I kept imagining the scenario and was like 100% not scared anymore)

10/21/20

12:16 pm: Realtor just told us that our offer on the house was accepted! (and weird cause I mentioned while we were touring it, “I think I like this house better than all the other houses we’ve seen.”)

around 5:10 pm: “double ham, double cheese.” – Rodrigo to himself while ordering our celebration pizza from the Domino’s app when he got home (and he brought home champagne & wine)

got a thought tonight: if you are totally enclosed in soft smooth skin, and are healthy, there’s nothing more to ask for in life. That is ultimate happiness, to me.

10/24/20—Something I’ve been thinking about: how Joseph Murphy says that God doesn’t respond to begging or pleading. How he responds more to like, claiming your right and claiming your power that is already in existence inside you. I couldn’t really think of a metaphor for it, couldn’t really relate until today, coming home from the BLM March, striding up driveway of my parents’ house and one of the garage doors was open with dad working inside, and I walked right in, no hesitation, knowing that (for the last 35 years) everything there was mine too, everything there belonged to our whole family, including me, and there was no need to intellectualize any of this- it’s just something I instinctively knew and have always known. Approaching the garage and passing the threshold of its open door, there was no question- no needing to think it out or work it out in any way in my mind. It’s something I know in my body, without words, that I belong there and that everything there belongs to me. I was thinking- that’s what claiming your God-power must be like- something like that.

10/25/20—was just laughing so hard cause we just scheduled our home inspection, and afterwards R said it would be funny if the inspector showed up w/a magnifying glass, smoking a pipe, in a trench coat (like Inspector Gadget).

10/9/20— a reaction from R I really liked today, that I didn’t expect—I’m planning his bday trip and it kind of disappointed me that it’s so far (like 4 hrs to get to the place) but the place looks nice, so I booked it for us for his bday weekend. I asked him today, “would you mind driving 4 hours for your birthday trip?” and before he even said anything, his face lit up, hehe. And then he said, “Wow! no! I don’t mind!” so I could tell he really didn’t seem to mind, lol. I was glad, at least that makes one of us.

10/12/20— A Chinese superstition mom taught us when growing up was to fear the number 4 because the Chinese word for 4 sounds like the Chinese word for death. While looking at houses we like lately, have been hit again and again with this number in different forms (463 Cove, 49 Watson, 13 Bucknell, and most recently today, 4 Silver Lake Dr.) and i noticed it bothering me a little. So in trying to reconcile myself with the number 4, came up with these meditations:  1) orgasms are referred to in French as “a little death”  so our house could be a house of continual orgasms! 2) I think you should not fear physical death. there are worse things in life than physical death, I think. 3) you can’t be a creative person and grow spiritually/personally unless you are continually dying to old ways of thinking and the person you once were. You have to be willing and able to continually die in this way, to let go of things in this way, always. it’s the road to becoming more beautiful, more perfect.  4) And death is the ultimate letting go, isn’t it? It’s letting go of all you thought you owned: your own body, your own life. So to fully choose to live in a house that’s numbered 4 is like being unafraid to face the ultimate in letting go. It will be a house of stark bravery and foundational truths. It could be the house of many orgasms as well as a house that accepts all forms of death as a vital part of the life cycle towards beauty.

I realized something this morning- idk what exactly made me realize it, but me and R just had sex the past 3 days in a row and I was just walking around the house by myself in the morning getting ready for work and thinking—and for me, it’s kind of a big-deal realization. I realized that like, I think I could go the rest of my life with R, and not have sex with him, and be happy. I never thought, with me being such a sex-focused person, that…I would say that—I thought that sex was like, ESSENTIAL in a relationship, to me. It was, when we were dating, definitely I think essential to me. But I think that like…even though it’s great, like…it really does not take up most of our time. Most of our time together is just being in the same room with each other interacting, and I realized THAT’S what I love most, just being with him- eating, watching movies, talking, laughing, discussing, squeezing each other’s toes. Even solving problems – I like how he solves problems. Like, all that is enough for me, is what I’m saying. And it’s not like my sex drive has gone down or anything—we just fucked the last three days and my eyes were rolling back in joyous pleasure each time and I feel like I initiated it like 2 out of the 3 times, and I still desire him as much as ever, my face is still like magnetically drawn to his penis, I’m still thinking of ways to be sexy and beautiful and desirable to him and all that. It’s just…idk. It’s just that maybe I love him—all of him, I realize. That’s all. I just never thought I would say that about sex—that I could do without it and still be happy. But I think it’s true. For me, now. And even as I say it, I’m realizing that…that’s kind of how it should be. Because if your happiness is dependent on sex, then…your happiness is conditional.

10/16/20— “blessed are the flexible, cause they’re never bent out of shape.” – Dr. Andrew Holecek

10/4/20

please take my mind. it’s too much for me. it’s too busy, with many worldly habits and tendencies. bogged down with things like reality, with things like what’s not possible. please take my mind—encompass and lead it— and bring it to where it should be, can be – its highest potential. please carry me there; i can’t get there alone. please carry me.

10/5/20

I kinda just noticed this…something I like about marriage, that started when I was dating R but I guess is just really blossoming/starting to bloom more now. (would I still feel the same if I was just living w R and not married to him? maybe, but I would be a little less invested, I think, because of that missing sign, for me, that he is invested.) it’s that, I think, I try harder. I push a little more, and I see that that extra effort is coming from me wanting to please someone else (my husband) as opposed to just myself, if I were single. The two biggest examples I think are food and home. Like food, living by myself, yes taste is a factor, but nutrition was kind of a bigger factor for me. Like I could eat a lot bland-tasting stuff- just boil vegetables- and be totally fine, single. But now, with R, I’m trying to make it a better balance of taste and nutrition—out of like, thoughtfulness for him—out of wanting him to get pleasure from food, since I know food is one of his highest pleasures. If I was alone, I think, I wouldn’t be as interested in making things so tasty, or introduce as much variety in our meals as I am now. And then the other example is decorating the house—I always, from when I was little, loved decorating and arranging things inside my room/my apt/my space to look pretty. But I just feel like with R around, married and living with him, it pushes me to take it a little further. I invest a little more energy, thought, and money into it just because our space is a shared space now, and like I said before—that my life/my space affects him too—affects a person other than me, makes me try a little harder for that person.  I like how marriage pushes me—not just spiritually/personal growth wise, but even in these physical-world ways.

On a similar note—I think if it weren’t for our wedding, I might have gone my whole life without ever trying fake lashes. But at least now I can say I’ve tried them, so can say from experience I don’t like them lol.

10/7/20

something about myself I just realized that is one of my (core?) qualities, that I wasn’t conscious I had until now I think, that I like (now that I realize it, I can look back and cite past instances): like….in the “midst” of things—that is—when I look around and realize how hard things have gotten, how deep in we are, how surrounded, how endless…I feel I have this funny quality that..like, upon realizing things have gotten to this point, something inside me like, instinctively pushes. It pushes and gives me a second wind and this feeling like…like…idk. Like it gives me more energy and focus and drive and stuff, I think, to realize that we are kind of in deep shit or something. Like, I don’t get depressed or downtrodden or discouraged, I think, in “bad circumstances.” I get energized and I feel mobilized. idk if it has something to do with leftover hypervigilance from decades of being a young female always feeling like I had to watch my back or something, but…I like that I don’t give up or anything like that. I like what my first response is to being in deep shit. I mean idk if it’s with physical things per se, though I can see myself persisting physically. But I feel like it’s more of a mental thing, with me. This inclination. What made me realize this tendency is that I just read the term “pandemic fatigue” today and my kind of first response to it was, “Now is the time to be vigilant. Now is the time to not let your guard down. Like if there ever was a time to persist, it’s now.”

10/8/20

About 6:35 pm, R squeezes my butt in the kitchen and says,

“I have to check on your butt every ten minutes.”

me: “why?”

R: “to make sure it’s still there”

9/28/20

“That we are all connected. To think that there is any amount of distance where something bad can be happening to someone else, and we are safe from it—I think that’s more dangerous than the pandemic itself.”

– Kempis Songster of Amistad Law Project, Philadelphia from podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-it-forward/id1532219362

9/30/20

started praying this last night:

pls give me whatever i need to never fail him. Anything I’m lacking, let it now start to be silently filled, so that when the time comes, I have no weak spots- so that he can fall anywhere onto me, and I can hold him up completely. please. Anything I need to lose—any ego, pride, any belief, habit or ideology that could hinder me from fully supporting him—let it now start to leave me. bend me. shape me. make me perfect. make me beautiful.

10/2/20

Yesterday it was around dusk when we went to see a house and when we turned onto its street, we saw one deer standing right in the middle of the street, staring at us, who then crossed the street and joined another deer on a lawn, they were a pair. they kept staring at us lol, and me and R kept staring at them. They looked more scared of us, but we were entranced at them. Their ears twirled and pricked at every little noise. They had big bodies, their middles were wide with bulk. And then R just turned the wheel to pull up in front of the house, and there was another one, a big one, like right on the lawn lol, staring at us too, R paused the car for us to stare back, and then he walked away, off the lawn. None of them had antlers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a deer w antlers before. And later R said he thought it was a good sign, seeing all the deer. : )