Happy Weekend!

Oh I am so happy there are no meetings, no co-workers, no code (unless it sounds like fun to do), and no office tension for two days! I had a tension headache going strong by 1PM and it has been going back and forth since then. I feel it from my jaw to my shoulders, all across my head. I'll neti before bed to see if that offers any relief at all -- maybe some sinus irritation complicating things.

The official announcement was made that a person would be leaving my team. The news I learned about yesterday. I'm was aware of knowing ahead of time, not really being able to reveal that (doesn't seem appropriate). I just wanted to work on my scripts too, but there was talking to do with team members. It was just tiring. I did get some more accomplished on my scripts but it was all done through the haze of a headache.

CK wrote me late last night, well very early this morning, to let me in on how she was doing on Wednesday night. She was less anxious mentally than I had thought and was feeling the anxiety in her body in a way that was akin to ticklishness.

When I read that this morning it occurred to me how my anxiety colors things. In writing last night I felt I had identified how my anxiety gets tied up in a desire to comfort CK. That it becomes my own desire to be comforted by touching her. To some degree that could almost be seen as a positive under some circumstances -- both of our feelings of anxiety might be helped when we hold each other. But I also need to be able to be OK with the anxiety I feel. Reading her message this morning I could see how in working to just be with my anxiety is helpful to us both. I still think it was good I remembered I could turn to using metta meditation as a container for my anxiety -- turning it into merit.

Today she's sent me messages letting me know she is doing fine, we talked while I was over with Atari, and chatted this evening. It has been wonderful to have that connection, I'm so grateful that she is willing to include that effort in her time away. I was telling her earlier that I would be just fine if I didn't get that connection, but I do prefer having it. It feels good, nurturing to maintain the closeness of our relationship even when one of us is away.

I'm starting to feel a little less shaky about things. At times it has felt like everything would just fly apart, leaving all of us hurt and I felt terribly guilty and ashamed that I might hurt the two most important people in my life. It has been so terrifying to try and settle into this relationship. Maybe it is only because trying to maintain my practice with it keeps me aware of how connecting, opening up to intimacy with another person can be so frightening. CK is the first person I've fallen in love with without any of the layers of personae I had in prior relationships. It feels at times so much bigger without all of that cushion between my essential self and another person.

It also has been hard to let go of fear that things are going to go badly with AM, that we will end up hating one another, something that always was in the background in my first marriage. It has taken a while for me to really grasp how exhausting the undercurrent of jealously had been, especially since it was mixed with the message that I was supported in whatever I wanted to do. I would go ahead and do something that was fulfilling to me, maybe even something like going for a bicycle ride and not even a date with another person, and I would be told that what I wanted to do was fine, I was supposed to be able to do what I wanted. After all, AP and I supposedly had a polyamorous marriage. But I'd do what I wanted, needed to do and I'd be greeted with silence, sharp words, envy.