A pre-emptive happy birthday to Rosey and Phil. :-D
My leg is almost completely healed already, only a week later. Wow. Very little of the scab remains.
It was a wonderful weekend in general, with a few down points. I spent Friday night with Jon, playing Silent Hill 4…made some good progress on it. I was stuck on one part because I knew I’d missed something, so he consulted a map and told me what I was missing and the story continued. I’m about 6 hours into it now, and have just reached the second half of the game. I played through most of the first half of the game again when we visited Peter and Melissa on Saturday and took only 1:45 to get to nearly the same point. It’s far easier the second time through, once you know what to do. Plus things make a TON more sense. So yes, we spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening with Peter and Mel, and it was a fantastic time. We went to a park and played frisbee and rocked on the hobby horses (Jon has some great pics of that which he has yet to offload from his camera.) Also, a group of 7-year olds mugged us! The little bastards grabbed two of the frisbees and tossed them up on the roof of the nearby school. They tried to go for Jon’s camera as well, but he held onto it. Amongst one boy constantly asking Peter if he was gay and three children ferociously pulling on Melissa, we were able to escape relatively unscathed but muttering “What the fuck?!” I was just appalled at their behavior…absolutely no respect whatsoever. I couldn’t fathom acting that way at that age (or ever at *all*)…and I seriously wondered if that boy had any concept of what gay meant, other than knowing it’s “supposed” to be derogatory. I certainly didn’t at that age, though things have changed quite a bit in this world since then. This incident merely drove my conviction to never have children deeper. Thank god Ross shares my feelings towards children. I’m sure any kids we’d have would be really fantastic people and very well-cared-for, but I just do NOT want that responsibility. Plus, the idea of having a child running around that’s part of me is absolutely terrifying to me. I don’t want that at all.
Other than that, they played Hot Shots Golf 3 while I crocheted and we made fun of the caddy’s midwest accent. On Sunday, after I told my parents how awful I thought our local radio announcers’ accents were, Mom commented that she’s noticed I’m beginning to speak like Jon in the inflection and pronunciation of certain vowel sounds. Not surprising at all really. Just wait until I’m around Ross and Jules a lot. Huhu.
I spent all of Sunday afternoon and evening cleaning and sorting through my things in the basement. I had soooooo much stuff down there…all kinds of old art supplies and projects, both finished and unfinished. I was able to get rid of 3 garbage bags worth of stuff, and packed 3 large boxes full of art supplies and paper that I’ll give to my second cousin Kevin because it’s stuff I’ll never touch again (Crayola colored pencils, markers, crayons, etc.) He has a pretty strong interest in drawing, so hopefully he’ll get some use out of the stuff. I know if I were that age and someone gave me some packages like that I’d be in heaven. So hopefully he’ll have a similar reaction.
Once it got to be around 9 PM, I was absolutely exhausted mentally. I’d gone through so much stuff, and I’d begun sorting through the 8 portfolios I had stuffed with drawings and prints. My god. I tossed out a pretty healthy stack of stuff, but there’s still waaaaay too much of it left. I think I’ll have to go through it about 5 more times until I’ve whittled it down to what I really want to keep and what’s expendable. Things like my print editions trip me up some because I don’t know if I should keep one print or the entire edition. Then again, it’s all class work, so what difference does it really make? I don’t know. In any case, after feeling “stuck” by that issue, I hit a brick wall and ended up staring into space for the next two hours. I just kept looking around my room and looking at all the stuff that’s left in there and I started to feel really suffocated by all of it. I mean, I’ve already gotten rid of so much of it, and it’s been a slow but steady process, but there’s still way too much left. I do still have some time left so it won’t be too hard to keep sifting things out little by little. I’ll get there eventually, I know. I’m determined to make this happen, so I have confidence it will. Usually when I really want something, I make it happen. So yeah…I just felt so suffocated. And then I started thinking about the reality of being in Australia so soon and I got really overwhelmed by the enormity of that. Many tears ensued, and I reluctantly went to bed, where I cried some more. It felt good to release that…and I’m fairly certain this will keep happening until I actually arrive there.
When I cry over this, it’s not because I feel upset or sad, or anything negative. It’s just such an incredibly huge thing for me…the *biggest*, most important thing I’ve ever done. Because of the magnitude of my feelings (not just for Ross, but for all of them) it’s just so overwhelming that in order to handle it, I have to release the emotions somehow. Tears are such a natural, convenient outlet for that. I have never been so happy, excited, nervous, anxious, or scared about anything in my life. This truly will be a life-altering trip. Since I realize that the tears are merely a way to keep myself from exploding, I don’t feel sad or ashamed by them, I just let them flow and use them as a path to calmness (of both mind and body.) Because I knew from the start that I’d react this way, I’ve attempted to keep the reality of the situation from myself so I wouldn’t have to indulge in this behavior, but it’s beginning to seep in bit by bit and it’s getting a little harder not to think about it more and more. Every once in awhile I find myself tallying the days left to go, which I tried to avoid altogether for a long time. I just need to stay focused and not lose it, because I have a lot to do between now and then.
Some moments arise when I just think to myself how unbelievably lucky I am to be so completely in love with Ross. I’m always aware of my feelings for him, thinking of him always brings a smile to my face, but there are some particular moments that come up now and again when it just strikes me with powerful conviction that he is just such a wonderful and fantastic and beautiful person, and I am so lucky to be the person he loves. The fact that he allows me to love him freely, without holding back, is monumental to me, having dealt with fear of scaring people away with the intensity of my feelings. This is so important to me, I can’t even stress how incredibly important it is. I exist to love, and I absolutely ache to love to my full capacity. Ross has shown me that my true capacity for love is still uncharted, and that there is still room for me to grow to love him more, despite each moment being the apex of what I considered my range to be at that point in time. Ross is such a special person, someone who is so unique and bizarre, yet completely loveable and charismatic. A combination of so many qualities that seem to contradict each other, but only on the surface…the more I get to know him, the more I realize these things only seem like contradictions because there’s so much I haven’t discovered about him yet, so much he hasn’t discovered about himself yet. Ross is a very mysterious creature, one whom few people know well. I feel so honored and humbled that he’s shared as much of himself with me as he has…this is truly a gift to be treasured, and never to be taken lightly. There are certain people in my life that have an “otherworldly” quality to them, as if they are something that’s just a step above human, and Ross definitely has this. Its form and the feelings I get from it are different than the other people I sense this from (Jules and Will in particular) but it is absolutely there, nonetheless. I wish I had a better way of describing/explaining what I mean by that, but I really don’t. So if that doesn’t make any sense to you, I apologize, but I guess you’d really need to know these people pretty well to completely understand.
I feel really peaceful at the moment. Feeling the soreness/tiredness around my eyes resulting from my tears last night makes me feel really relaxed and calm, as it’s a constant reminder of how I’d purged the overwhelming sensations from my body and soul. I always feel so much better after a good cry, even the following day. I should be tired today but I’m not because I don’t feel as weighed down. I think yesterday was a very important day for releasing so much of the tension that was building as a result of all the overwhelming things I’ve been feeling recently. I really look forward to getting rid of enough of my things so that I no longer feel like my life is a cluttered mess. I’m getting there, slowly but surely. :-)
