I am wiped, people.  I don’t even know what to say about the last week.

I think I feel better.  I’m still feeling around the edges of this.  The edges feel solid, but it might be hollow in the middle.

However that I feel better (maybe) seems weird as this week has been pretty sucky.  In reverse order:

Back at work after a to brief vacation.  I got a promotion, but, wow, I was not prepared for the focus and energy I’d need for my new job.  I feel good about my ability to learn it.  And honestly I’m kind of glad to have it to focus on.  Less time to worry pointlessly about things I can’t control.

My vacation ended, um, confusingly.  Wait, I’m going backwards, so between work restarting and vacation I had a cancer biopsy on, well, I’ll maintain some level of politeness and say that my stitches make peeing awkward, sitting can be uncomfortable and at no time would I feel comfortable telling a coworker where it is.  It was an unpleasant procedure, though the team that did it was great and made me feel as comfortable as possible.  I’m (probably overly) concerned about keeping it clean while it heals and hoping the location means it will heal faster than say my foot or my back would.

I came home from the procedure more distressed than I thought I’d be.  I tried to distract myself by cleaning up the post house guest untidiness.  While doing the dishes a pipe connector broke and water started pouring over my feet.  I got the water off, threw down some towels and stood at the sink and sobbed for my mom. Who lives 2500 miles away.  As I pulled myself back together my amazing landlord and friend came and fixed the sink, cleaned the mess and even ran the heap pf wet towels through the laundry.  Later my mom called and successfully distracted me until bedtime, with many reminders to take of myself since a removal biopsy is trauma, it seems small but a centimeter of flesh lost wasn’t meant to happen to your body.

The entire biopsy was misery, I still don’t have the results and the stitches are awful.  This has been the delineating line between my vacation and my return to my new position at work.  And my vacation ended confusingly.

I didn’t sleep with Cedar. But only because he had the presence of mind to slow it down before it went to far.  But that was the last of our trip: we kissed, groped, fondled and pushed the bounds of intimacy. Then we slept and I took him straight to the airport with everything unresolved.

The thing is I decided before the trip started that I needed a friend more than I needed a vacation lover or possible complicated long distance relationship.  We very much enjoyed each other’s company on the trip.  It was a good trip.  Mind clearing, beautiful, full of the small, good kind of unexpected.  For days and days, nothing but sky and green and back roads and music.   Silence for all the right long stretches of time, good conversation in between.

The trip was only marred by being a little rainy and cool, and the occasional text from Hawthorn expressing a previously unknown amount of jealousy about me being with anyone else.  I tersely reminded him that he broke up with me and didn’t get to even comment on what I did now (much later, post trip, when he was consoling me I pulled out the big guns and meanly made him feel like utter shit about it).

In the aftermath of all of it I realized that what I’ve been wanting is Hawthorn back, things back the way they were. But now I know I could never accept that.  It isn’t a possibility.  I just don’t think I could ever trust him again.  And ironically it was his expression of jealousy that made me realize this.  Like he could decide not to want me and I could mourn and mourn and mourn, but if decides again after all that that he wants me then he’s untrustworthy.  Because when will he decide again that he doesn’t want me? I couldn’t go through it again.  I couldn’t even go through the possibility of being with him always filled with doubt that some unknown action of mine would make him change my mind again.

So I guess that’s a relief. I still feel sadness over the loss of our relationship, but in just a few short days I feel more calm around Hawthorn and less broken up by every interaction.

As for Cedar, I just don’t know. I haven’t really processed it all.  In the short, I feel like I do need a friend more than a complicated romance. There isn’t more to say about it right now.  I’m just giving it time.  That last interaction we had was so sexually charged, but somehow it was only about me. I don’t mean that negatively.  I feel like I gained power.  Or like maybe I found power I thought I had lost forever.

Still it’s all very jumbled emotionally for me. I’m trying to just let it all go, all out into the universe.  What returns, returns.  I’m just to tired to worry about it any more.  For now I want to be better at my job.  I want to make my home more my own, not just filled with things, but filled with things I made with my hands.  I want to read books and watch TV.  I want to sleep late and get my chores done.  Every minute of the last two years, every interaction with Oak, every second I spent longing for something else from Hawthorn has drained me.  I feel like I’ve been struggling for so long, grasping for emotional straws only to keep getting shoved below the metaphorical water, where I can’t breathe.  I’m not struggling and it turns out I float okay.  So I’m just gonna hang here for a bit and breathe big lungfuls of air. Recharge until it’s time to actually swim for something.  Until I know which direction to swim.

There’s obviously so much more to say, but that’s what this time I’m giving myself is for, right? Thinking it out until it’s clear enough to say.