honest brave compassionate human being

I once was in Hawaii and saw a couple preparing to go deep sea diving. They had weights; they did stretches and breathing exercises beforehand. They were prepared, they knew what to do, they had practiced and practiced and walked away safely. I was entranced in part because, on this particular day, I was scared to even snorkel, much less dive deep, deep down without a connection to the air, without a connection to the surface, and with so much pressure. I was reminded of this as I considered my emotional being and means of relating to people. I like to deep dive into the emotional world. I can go deep and explore and sometimes bring up or point out something interesting. But I am not always prepared, or gentle with myself or other people. The deep sea divers did not notice me watching and drag me with them. And they prepared themselves as well. Over the course of my life, many people have said to me, "You're too intense; you want too much; this is too much for me; you'

I'm gay. I want to have sex with other women. This is relatively new to me. I'm in my 30s and I've been in a relationship with the same man for over 10 years. But coming to this understanding of myself has helped some things click into place. Many things, actually seem different now, through this lens of better understanding myself and my sexuality. When I first started reflecting on this, it felt like it couldn't be real because I'm not a teenager, I'm in my 30s and I've been in a loving (albeit sexually difficult) relationship with a man for quite some time and everyone's just so used to thinking of me as straight (including me). This seems both a long time coming and completely sudden. I've been thinking about this idea for several years, not actually being gay, but that I wasn't completely straight (and probably I'm not completely gay either, but that's closer to the truth). I actually even told my partner at the beginning of the

I've spent the last two weeks visiting my brother, who lives in Amsterdam. I live in Portland, Oregon. I spent the entire first part of my flight, the flight from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, crying, because I am heartbroken to be so far away from him, and heartbroken that it was special that we got to be together, and heartbroken that I don't know when I'll see him again, and heartbroken that it's the longest we've spent together since he was eight and I was seventeen. I am heartbroken that although he is the family member who lives furthest from me, the family member who lives closest to me is still over a thousand miles away. And that even were I to give up the things I'm willing to give up to be closer to my family (my job, my house, some of the community I've developed living in Portland), it wouldn't be enough because the rest of my family would still live hours and hours away by car or plane. We live so far away for ordinary reasons, and I am ang

I am confronting a work situation and trying to pull out what is mine and what is everyone else's. I am working on boundaries. I am noticing this person inside me who is so scared to get in trouble. I keep asking her, "What is it like to get in trouble? What happens to you? Why is it the most terrible?" but she, so far, doesn't answer. I think she's afraid of getting in trouble. But since I don't know what getting in trouble is like for her, I can't reassure her that she won't get in trouble. Instead, I keep inviting her to tell me about it. I keep telling her that I'll be here, and she can come sit with me. She doesn't have to talk. She can just sit with me. If she does want to talk, then I'll listen, and she can sit with me and talk as much as she needs to and I'll just keep listening. This person has been very present to me lately. I notice that she's with me almost constantly sometimes. Last night, it was her dream I had:

I'm thinking about how we know each other. I'm thinking about how I know myself. I've just spent 200+ hours with a group of people in which we said, aloud, intimate and sometimes alarming things about ourselves. We worked to bare our rawness and beauty and were seen, so closely, by others in the room. And here we are on the other side, and I am thinking: do I know them? Do they know me? Even the people with whom I felt most bonded, who most held me and who sought me out and I held them and sought them out, I'm thinking -- what do I know about you, other than I am interested and so are you? What about each other makes us interesting to the other? I'm inspired to make lists of all the people I've just spent all this time of, to find a collection of facts about them to sit with and wonder about. I doubt this will help me though. I already know those facts -- that's why I could make a list of them. The clue I'm attending to here is that I already know

My mom texted me to say that they'd decided to euthanize one of the dogs, and that my brother was sad, and maybe I could call him? This is the dog that follows my mom everywhere, the dog that she greets first, before me, even when I've come many miles to visit. I wanted her to express her own grief. I wanted her honesty. My sibling called me today, upset about a situation with a friend. They wanted me to validate their choice of how to deal with it, and confirm that they'd done a reasonable thing. I did not think that they had. I could not, I told my own friend, do what my sibling wanted. During the conversation with my sibling, I felt the pull of my (metaphorical, habituated) oxen and it took much of my attention to avoid saying, "I would have done this! Are you sure you want to cut your friend off like that? Why don't you calm down first and re-asses? No wonder multiple of your friendships have ended suddenly." I knew these were oxen of judgment, but the