Tag: life

Why Not Fall Cleaning?

It’s that time of the year when I come alive the most, and that means I prepare like its a new year, before the frozen embrace of winter sets us in place. I feel a flurry of energy to take stock of my yarn and fabric, go through my wardrobe to declutter, up cycle, and repair. I organize, I dream, I plan home improvement projects for those slow, hunker down days. I don’t feel this way at all in the Spring, I feel worn down by the winter icy, and dry air. I feel the weight of the garden, on my shoulders, and the desire to be outside again and sketch on the porch. The last thing I want to do is re-organize my house and clean. So is it the cadence of the four seasons that brings this rhythm of preparation to fall? Is is our fixation on the academic calendar? I’m not sure. It has been a time tested fixture of human culture. Forever, we have been preparing for winter, harvesting, hunting, and making.

So why, is it called Spring Cleaning? Surely Fall Cleaning would make more sense. I found that it is an ancient and modern phenomenon. The earliest mentions of a “spring cleaning tradition” are found in two west Asian cultures – Persian and ancient Israel. Iranian culture celebrates Persian New Year, Nowruz, on the first day of Spring. To recognize the new year, Iranians prepare by “shaking the house” a thorough clean, or “redd up” as my Western Pennsylvania culture would say. This makes a ton of sense to me. Honestly, I wish our modern New Year wasn’t in January, for my climate dictates the New Year kicks off during the coldest month! Not a time to do anything really other than waiting for the snow storms and negative Fahrenheit temps to pass. It makes for quite a boring holiday. The latter should have been obvious to me, growing up in the church, but I did not connect the two that Passover preparation could be the origin. During Passover, all things made with leavening or fermentation were removed to remember the Israelite flight from Egypt.

For a more modern origin, coal based heating systems would prompt a cleaning ritual in North America, to open up the windows and clear the soot. Honestly, quite a lame origin story, but important. I think a house down the road is burning coal in an burner, and I absolutely despise the stench of it. The smoke is thick and dark, permeating the air in the cold pockets of January’s bitter wind.

My fall cleaning, I’d say has a lot more in common with Nowruz than Passover or cleaning away soot. I love the description of shaking the house, it reminds me of how my Papa would describe my Grandma’s penchant for order, “She’s mean on clean.” As a child, I had no appreciation of her passion for cleaning, now as adult with my own spaces to keep tidy, a good straight up of the house brings me joy. I’ve been tackling the ever-present chaos of my craft room. It began with a sort through of my inventory, organizing it all into banker boxes and a new drawer set from Amazon to keep the fabric folded and yarn skeins arranged by fiber and weight. I can actually find what I need, when I need it, for the first time in my sewing and knitting life! Who knew a few boxes could be life changing? Organizing my stuff the way my mind processes it, well it has cut down on distractions. My easily distracted Neurodivergent brain used to find everything in my tornado of a closet, but the project I was looking for. It made everything take longer than normal, a simple search, an odyssey of investigation and forgetfulness. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I rode this high into my closet, going through it all and organizing more, t-shirts by color family, mixing up my storage solutions from hangers, to zipper bins, to planning shelves to make there be a flow. Putting clothes away can turn into a series of doom piles, because the system was badly designed by me. I needed a way to keep the organization going, while I sorted and folded my clothes, yet again a bad plan led to me sorting through a random drawer for the third time that month, instead of putting the rest of the laundry away. It was a waste of time, leaving me frustrated once again at my squirrel brain. A flow to getting dressed, and a choreographed dance of freshly laundered clothes waltzing into their places once again. But why stop there? Less to organize would be ideal. Thus began a lovely fall purge of clothing into piles – donate, up cycle, repair, and trash/scraps. All the clothes, shoes too! I feel so empowered. I have struggled to part with anything since experiencing grief and trauma in the 2020’s, and it has been embarrassing. I will live with too much stuff, wanting to re-home it, yet being unable to part with it, in some guilt that I don’t understand. I think the burden of my mind is fading, with healthy clarity returning to my heart. I’m not saying goodbye, over and over again, I am being a good steward of things, and sometimes that means you have to let things go. Even my handmade items that may not serve me, but could make someone else happy.

With a clearer mind, I feel inspired to create. This comes ever fall, with a flurry of ideas for new sweaters, accessories, and clothing. This year is a special one as I have been making pants, from scratch and from up-cycled materials. I will be fine tuning my cold weather accessories too, with plans to make excellent hats, mittens, and socks. I’d also like to make a bag or two. My sweater plans are more focused this year. I understand how to make the thing now, so how can I make them better? I guess I shook the house of my creativity too, in this clean.

Do you feel motivated in fall to get things done? Are you a fall cleaner or a traditional spring cleaner?

A Sea Of Shifting Sand

The more I feel like I should suppress my feelings about something, the more I feel it pressing upon my heart to be bold and talk about it. Can you relate?

I feel like my world has been swirling around me since 2024. Change. Good or bad, I never feel prepared. Leveling up in life, it is rewarding yet sometimes it is more akin to biking up hill and shifting gears downward for the tough pedaling ahead. And I wonder if there are more people feeling this way?

My early thirties have been incredibly rewarding – buying a house, adopting a rabbit, building a garden, successfully sewing pants, etc. But they have also been a sea of shifting sand globally, professionally, and personally.

We all know the public, political bad – the orange fool that has put us all on blast for 2 years. The price of everything, including yarn & fabric has challenged my professional goals because it is so expensive. It zapped my creativity and threw me off my game. I mean, how can I feel inspired to create when neighbors are being kidnapped and put into concentration camps, and our tax dollars are going to fund a war and a genocide. It’s dark. Like where is the joy when that is happening and your “representatives” are trying to silence your right to vote?

I basically took a year off from sewing to regroup, picking up my thimble again this August. I threw my focus into yarn crafts – knitting and crochet, pondering what my plan is going to be to fight for what is right. It’s been humbling to understand that I can help and also this whole situation is systemic, and will be far more difficult to get to the bottom of then I realized. But game on.

AI and the poor economy has been discouraging to my professional goals of becoming a pattern designer. I would like to be a full time, fiber artist, that is bringing in money. But AI has been a one two punch of stealing work and stealing engagement of artists everywhere. It has made creativity feel hopeless, and sharing work online, like I am contributing to a malevolent overlord.

AI and data centers are like a curse dropped into our lives, disrupting what worked and what gave us joy. Now, we have to fight for our water, environment, and creative expression. I know we humans will win this one. I fully believe AI is a fad that will cause a bunch of damage and then collapse – like mining and steel, it is just going to be messy in the present and future. 

What I wasn’t prepared for was the personal complexities of marriage, healing from childhood trauma together, and the doom spiral of parents having health issues and also toxic parents dropping in to rock your world. I have felt some days like nothing feels familiar. Some days, this healing journey that Kyle and I are together has feel like a canyon, spreading between us, and we’ll never rejoin on the same road again. It has been so weird.

Why doesn’t anyone prepare you for how hard marriage is? Or how outside forces and generational cycles can seriously fight the strong bond you have with your spouse. I feel like he and I have been in the trenches on one of these outside problems for a decade now, and I just want us to be able to climb out of this together and walk home hand in hand, but people are complicated and so for now, we keep holding on together and waiting for the hard work to be over.

I have never tried so hard across so many different relationships, and tasks (gardening, house responsibilities, social media marketing) to grow and succeed just for things to unravel over and over again. I have felt like I am on a boat that cartoonishly keeps springing leaks, and I am out of limbs and props, to stop the leaks. Some days I wish the cartoon rapids would just appear already so I can sail over the waterfall and smash the boat to bits, because my best efforts feel so futile. I get burnt out and want a change. Because perseverance is exhausting. Choosing to be hopeful and keep going can feel like a cruel joke.

What has shaken me to the core though, and I’m nervous to talk about, is the way the church doesn’t feel like the church to me. My churching friends have become far too comfortable with Christian Nationalism and it is freaking me out. The blind eye to suffering, and the hyper fixation on “sins” that are not sins. I have always found it baffling that the concept of a person in the church getting a divorce, or seeing Catholic believers as “real” Christians is controversial to some people. It’s those kind of opinions that get canonized by the group, that are so destructive.

That’s not even dipping our toes into the sexism, purity culture, and racism that has been alive for centuries. Seeing how normal this is, has been infuriating to me. It has made me feel like I don’t know where I belong anymore. And to be honest, has awoken real life pain of never feeling good enough to be a “good Christian” to some because my parents divorced.

To be clear, I 100% believe in God and that God is good, and that it is the church, the humans, that are taking things to a bad place. I’d like to elaborate more on these reflections in another post, because I don’t think I’m alone in feeling like I am at risk of being sucked into the corruption in these normally “safe” spaces.

It’s not what I thought the church and my christian friends would become. The corruption is running rampant here, and I hate it. But this is not the first, and won’t be the last, because constant sanctification is needed to continually keep our focus on what is important – loving others as God loves us.

I have a ton of stuff to work through, and I am so far from perfect. I just want to open up about things I have been too afraid to open up about because of the highly controlling religious school settings I have found myself in as a kid, and no I did not go to Catholic school, I went to very Calvinist leaning private schools.

So we’ll see if I am brave enough to keep unpacking. I think we all just need to air this stuff out to move forward as the body of Christ in a healthier place, that is not wrapped in a fake cloak of hidden sin and cyclical shame of those who want to talk about the sin being tolerated, because the church in America is fine with teaming up with the political machine and money chasing.

This was a rambling one, but if you stuck through, I appreciate you.

Learning To Walk Away From Arguments

What is one way you have grown this year?

When someone is attacking your character, threatening pillars of security like your house, your cars, your bank account, for their own revenge, and is inciting derision in your relationship, how do you stay calm? I’ve been wrestling in these thoughts for the last month as a very unexpected thing happened that threw us for a major loop. I’ve been slow to write for this reason, because I felt so angry and bitter. All is good now though, in spite of the stress and the anger at the perpetrator of this stupid drama, but it begs the question, what does one do with these emotions?

When someone is attacking me, it’s a real struggle not to fight back and defend myself, or respond from a place of past pain and fire back with more gusto than the other person in an attempt to shut the argument down. But does that actually work? A younger me thought it did, but then younger me got the butt kicking of a lifetime by my uncle, who took a declaration of frustration at him and him alone, and manipulated it into a full on family fracture to hurt someone I love very much, my mom.

Lesson number two came from another family member, on a different side of my family, who doesn’t stop arguing. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, this person won’t stop nagging, or pushing their agenda. They refuse to take responsibility for their choices. They are the final boss of arguing, and it has taught me that fighting with this person in any way is futile. It doesn’t matter how wrong they are, they will not concede and so arguing, although it may feel good in the moment, for the temporary release of the emotional pressure valve, is dumb. There is nothing fruitful in addressing the problem with them, because they are denial of what the problem is really about. It’s terrible.

This has a paradoxical shift in my mind. Addressing the problem and dealing with it, is what I believed the healthy purpose of arguing was based in, but life is not that simple or noble. People are far more complicated and broken for that simple notion to be true. Learning to not engage, and walk away, even when someone is hurting you with their words, is the only way through sometimes. And it is incredibly difficult to master. It’s something you usually don’t learn until you are faced with impossible people. In the moment, you feel like the weight of their words outweighs what you know to be true. It feels like giving into manipulation, but it is not about surrendering at all. It is about preserving what is left of the relationship and moving on.

It is the art of learning not to argue. In both examples, my uncle and this other family member, created a stressful environment for me that left one option left. I have to walk away and not defend myself. I have to leave the argument behind. It is not weakness but instead a firm boundary rooted in the promise of a better tomorrow. It is taking the space to breathe and realize this relationship meant more to you than it did to them, and letting them go to fester in their own creation of chaos. You want better for them, but you can’t change them, or control them.

I have not mastered this, not even close. And to be fair, I have had many one sided arguments in my head. Their has been tears and lots of ranting. But not trying to explain myself or defend myself has helped me understand that their minds are already made up, and peaceful co-existence not being possible, is a them problem. I can’t want it more than them, I just have to let that part of our relationship evaporate into the sunshine. I have to focus on protecting my mental health by releasing the stress and hurt in healthy ways, like laughing, exercise, and quality time with family and friends that value the relationship with you, and want the best for you.

In time, walking away from arguments will get easier, I hope. This has been one of the most difficult lessons I have learned, in life. With both of these people, being members of the church, it has been a rough one for my faith. There is such hypocrisy in these relationships, and they both claim the high ground.

Leaving these relationships unsettled and broken feels like a failure, as we are supposed to live in harmony with each other, including other believers. Why doesn’t this bother them, like it bothers me? It makes me feel like a bad Christian. But that is probably another argument I need to just walk away from too.

Do you ever feel this way? Have you mastered the art of walking away from arguments? What helped you develop this skill?

A Carrot Named Lila Lu Sang

A purple carrot. At first it reminded me of Purple Heinz Ketchup from childhood. (Anyone else remember that?) But really, this purple carrot is more natural, and normal, than our uniform orange varieties. Before we domesticated carrots into monotony there were vivid, rainbows of carrot. I’m glad we never lost these to time.

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Ground Cherry Pie

The first in a new series called, Drawing the Seed Catalogs. We obviously have a lot of seed catalogs kicking around, what better way to put them to use? And the best part? Being able to find muses to draw without using my phone. 😁

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Drawing Pets as ACNH Villagers

Remember last year when I said I was going to create art consistently, starting with a study of Van Gogh? Oh good, me either. 😅 But in all seriousness, I am committed to making art this year. I miss it. These are three pet portraits I did of Midnight, Sully, and Mia, a few weeks ago in oil pastel.

I was inspired by Rachel Maksy to do this and spark a bit more joy in my life – and it did more than that! It helped me process grief too. I lost Midnight, over 15 years ago and Sully, just last August. Picturing them, hanging with my villager character, on this imaginary ACNH island, is a comforting little story.

For Midnight, I was inspired by Mira, for her spunky personality and fearlessness. I decided to change Midnight’s outfit to a clover dress from game, since loved clover the most of any treats!

Although Sully was Yorkie-Bichon mix, the dog and wolf characters are draw quite differently than what he looked like. Gonzo the koala in a perfectly Sully-looking sweater was just the ticket to capture Sully’s teddy bear essence.

Finally Mia was easy to pinpoint, Dottie looks like a Dutch rabbit which is similar to Mia’s harlequin color pattern. Since Mia loves baseball, dressing her in a baseball jersey seemed right.

I hope this brings you a little joy today. Wherever you are I hope you know you are special and deserving of love.

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Pivot! An Important Sewing Skill

Okay, as a millennial, I can’t hear the word pivot without thinking of this scene from Friends. But, silliness aside, Ross was correct; you have to pivot and pivot well. The longer I sew, the more agitated I get when I make foolish cutting or measuring mistakes in my garments. Like my shortalls from last year, I tried them on over the weekend because it is feeling warm and springlike here, and I was shocked by how poorly I fit the shorts. The top portion of the shorts fits excellently, but not the shorts. No one wants weird bunching when it comes to shorts, and that was exactly the problem!

At first, I went through the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance that no matter how delusional I chose to be, these shortalls are uncomfortable. I would not wear them. This made me feel so many regrets. The pink overalls I drafted completely from scratch, using a special fabric featuring corgis and bread from a Japanese fabric brand called Kokka Fabric, sourced from my local fabric shop, Firecracker Fabrics. The second pair was cobbled together as a challenge of fabric and repurposing. The fabric was 1 yard of 59″ cotton twill from Mood Fabrics, and the pockets were sourced from a pair of shorts in my closet. I refused to scrap these. But what could I do to fix these? With all the patterns at play, adding in a new fabric sounded scary. Cutting these into bags or future quilting projects was throwing in the towel too soon for me.

My solution came to me one night, as I was washing my face; I didn’t have to make a drastic change. I had to address the problem – the way I cut the curve of the pants. I could remove the section that divided the fabric into legs, and transform the shortalls into pinafore dresses with a few cuts and stitches! It was a success! The shorts are now a skirt, by cutting away the curved line and sewing a straight seam on the back and front of the skirt. I also made a quick swap to the back bib of the brown floral pair, adjusting the square bib to the triangle shape of the pink ones. This adjusted the fit of the dress in an excellent way. The purpose of the triangle, I believe, from the fit change on my garment is to eliminate gapping between your shirt and the back bib, so the fit follows the line of your body.

Now, sewing is not the only place to pivot, obviously. Problem-solving is a fundamental part of the creative process. Projects rarely work out the way you want, from knitting to cooking to building a piece of furniture. In this fast fashion, consume and donate, culture poisoning my country’s culture, we are losing the art of problem-solving. This has been exacerbated by the rise of AI and ChatGPT. Why think at all? Why imagine, ponder, or research? Why try if you aren’t going to get “expert” results? That is what the rise of optimization culture is creating: the fear of trying. But you have to try to become an expert. AI is not an expert; it is a thief, stealing the knowledge of humans who have spent years and decades striving to know, unafraid to try and fail. It’s literally the scientific method. So if you are an impressionable person, who is growing up in this current era, don’t give up your creative ability for AI to do it for you. You will lose crucial thinking and creative skills if you don’t exercise your mind and problem-solve on your own. Just do it.

#81 – Ten is My Magnum Opus

Commitment is scary. It feels like a box that closes around you. My mind wanders to all the negative possibilities. Will I become stagnant? Will I fail? Will I regret this? Commitment is not a bad thing, though; it is a fundamental to our relationships, to building character, and completing goals. Finishing any project, big or small, such as painting a wall or completing a degree, requires commitment. Being there for a friend. Adopting a pet. Planting a garden. Buying a house. Getting married.

The last one fills us as humans, living in the 21st century, with the most trepidation. I think because of how obligatory marriage can become in our human cultures. What is a Jane Austen novel without commentary on the role of marriage in 19th-century England? Women can see it as a burden, a life goal, or a way to survive. It is complex for all people – he, she, they to enter into a legally binding commitment built on the hope that this love we are choosing to pursue until we die, will not fail and consume us both.

As I have mentioned before, my parents got divorced when I was little. It was finalized when I was two, actually, so beyond a PTSD memory that is hard to dwell on, I don’t remember life before my parents divorced. My memory and examples of marriage in my life come from my grandparents and my mom, who married my wonderful stepdad (more like true dad) when I was 16. Without these two positive examples, I’m not certain marriage would have happened for me. It’s hard to understand, unless you experienced it, but living in the aftermath of your parents’ failed marriage shapes your opinion of marriage from a young age.

You are the living proof of failure, and are looked on with pity and dismay from many church people and people in your community. You are the weirdo. People want to “help” experience the normalcy of two parents, as if there is something wrong with the family that you have. I had three parents instead of two, and it felt normal to me. I learned about love, of all kinds – storage and agape, aka “affection” and “unconditional love.”

I think these loves are even more important to grasp as an impressionable youth than fixating on the hope of romantic love someday, because what brings you through marriage is all four loves – charity, agape, philia (friendship), and eros (romantic). Because marriage is built on vows, and keeping those vows is wonderfully challenging some days, but keeping them and not giving up has led to this exciting milestone – our tenth anniversary!

Growing up, knowing that marriage can and will fail for a lot of people, no matter how much you fight for it, scared the crap out of me, staring down the aisle. I didn’t want to fail, like a destiny I couldn’t shake. My parents’ divorce was not a curse to inherit, nor was it Kyle’s to inherit from his parents’ divorce, yet succeeding felt like the highest mountain I would ever climb, and honestly, I do feel that way today. So many things have changed in my life in the past ten years – jobs, friends, locations, family, pets – it’s been a roller coaster, and yet, here we are. We didn’t let the bad times get the best of us – the economy, the pandemic, job loss, grief, and hubris – we figured out how to navigate the things that scared us without ripping the seams to tatters.

What I thought would be the way through this would be never approaching that line, but life actually pushes you to the brink quite often. I think we, as humans, focus so much on perfection that we forget that even when you let your spouse down, you can dust yourself off and recalibrate. Even your worst moments don’t have to break you. Holding on to the highest highs, the wins, is important too. It’s a journey that you walk with your spouse towards the goal. It’s a sanctification process that will break you down with certainty, but I feel refined by the wisdom and the struggle, and the wins.

The bottom may come as close as you can imagine to dropping out, but your fears are not a prophecy for your life. Good things are not there to slip away from you; they are the victories. And so this exciting anniversary feels like a victory over all the voices in my head telling me to give up when things got hard, and to not enjoy the good moments in case something bad would happen. Yeah, good and bad have happened, and will continue to happen, but what Kyle and I are building, this commitment to be there for each other for every step of the journey, is a balm to the soul in these uncertain times. So I encourage you, in these heavy days, to plant your garden.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 

Jeremiah 29: 4-5, 7 NIV

Maybe Fiction Isn’t the Best Way to Express the Art?

With a new year comes new goals, like should I get organized and make this the year I return to writing as my full-time focus? I’ve been mulling over this for the past six months. I started watching more book-focused media and picked up physical books again, all in the quest to jump back into fiction writing after a one-time try in 2017 – also known as Udal Cuain. It was the ultimate escape during a time when every part of my life was falling apart, and we were struggling. My family was struggling; it was isolating, but instead, I crafted a world that I could escape into. I couldn’t afford therapy, so I wrote about what was on my mind. And it helped. It felt like a high I had never experienced before, but then it stopped helping. Life got a lot more complicated, but also better, more on track, and I walked away from it. Then I lost the draft for 6 years until I found it last January.

Life has been messy again, and the world feels like it is literally on fire, and I can feel the pull to want a coping mechanism.

This is where our story begins.

As I share often on this blog, I have become a sewist and fiber artist. I began this journey to a career pivot after a layoff in 2020, and it has become my whole world, particularly knitting and crochet. I find the more I dive into the craft of yarn, the more I feel creative release and the ability to tell stories with my stitches. You can even protest with it. I have been a visual artist my whole life, the frequency depending on how many notebooks, pencils, or paints I have access to. It is my first love. So where does writing fit in?

I was always a writer who enjoyed essays. I like writing about something, researching the subject, and I adore historical research. I enjoyed poetry in school, but my affection for literature came much later. Mainly by force, if you want to take AP English, you must read this many books over the summer. I’m still not the most passionate reader, I definitely take breaks between reading sprints, and sometimes I won’t pick up a book for months, because my hands are always busy with a project. This has put my desire to write another novel, a more polished one, in conflict with my life and potentially my calling.

This week, I sat down to brainstorm another round of novel ideas. This is my third or fourth round of this since 2023. Every time, I think of some good options, narrow my list down, start plotting, and hit a wall. My heart is not in it. I don’t see the characters or care to take my time to meet them. I want to get on with it and then analyze the deeper meaning. The other thing that happens regularly is that I freeze, and I think about how the world has changed since 2017 – mainly BookTok.

I don’t read Romantasy, I’m not going to write spice because that’s not my interest. Don’t look to me for trauma or disturbing plot lines; I don’t want to write that. I am white, cis, and straight, so will I offend by not having representation? I also don’t have the proper experience to offer diverse representation. I don’t know what I have to say in a book, like in a bigger picture – I don’t know what the deeper meaning is that I am looking to point to that I couldn’t just write about in an essay or create with visual or fiber art. This is where the title should start making sense. I don’t think worldbuilding and dialogue are my paint and canvas, and I don’t think we spend enough time considering where our gifts are best suited right now because of social media content.

We are so concerned with getting our work plugged into the algorithm, jumping on trends, cross-posting, and getting successful that we aren’t considering if the medium is best for our art. We are trying to fit in, and that’s killing creativity and the editing eye to know that’s not for me. I feel like it is obvious now, since reflecting on why I have writer’s block, but taking the time to look objectively feels so hard to do when we are fighting the AI monster. But it is okay to specialize. It is okay to find your niche and not appeal to everyone. It is better to work within your wheelhouse and say something authentically you and express it in a medium that feels true to yourself than worry about keeping up with others.

Maybe the best thing we can do as creative people is edit and focus on where we feel the most alive. I feel the most alive planning a personal knitting project that features motifs that represent my life and my loves. I love blogging and talking about serious things, not in literary techniques but in societal critique. I spent the day today, sketching and drafting pet portraits, and I am the most relaxed I have been in months. It’s the same high I felt writing Udal Cuain. I didn’t feel that way while brainstorming a novel. I felt nervous. So I don’t think it’s for me anymore.

Have you ever fallen into this trap? How did you find your way out? Thanks for spending time with me today. Until next time. Stay safe out there and know you are loved.

Emotional Endurance, No Cap

What do you do when you need a break, but you can’t? I’ve been wrestling with this for months. It’s been a tricky thing to discuss on here, and without feeling ready to write without revealing too much, I have been spinning on it, to quote NMIXX.

Any time I feel overwhelmed, I take that space. But what if you can’t? Like what if the thing that is weighing on you is as interwoven in your life as a single thread in the warp and weft of your jeans? It’s a tricky one that I don’t think anyone has taught me; it’s just kinda hanging there. We struggle alone, because we are human.

Relationship University

I’ve been thinking alone, pondering my frustrations, my overwhelm, my weariness for a break because I am a neurodivergent, deep-feeling, overthinker. It does not come easy to me to pause, to force my mind to stop and breathe. It’s something I wish we had learned in school. Any of the schooling – elementary, high school, or college? How wonderful would it be to learn about emotional intelligence and algebra? Traumatic stress coping mechanisms and world history? What about grammar and proper communication tools to de-escalate a tense argument? Literally would be life-changing. Meditation with a side of physical education? We mostly played soccer(football) because it was cheap, and it was monotonous. Both Kyle and I would feel less we are drowning in the complications of personal struggles if we had an education in relationships.

We did the brief marriage counseling, sure, which I guess prepares you for marriage? I think getting through the first year is truly what teaches you the most. (We are a few months away from celebrating ten, so we do have some experience.) We also had the years of friendship experiences, some previous dating experiences, and the lifelong knowledge of being part of families – but they don’t prepare you for the stress that comes with multiple, personal struggles that you and your spouse sometimes have to tackle all at the same time, meanwhile life keeps moving forward, and you feel like a hamster in a wheel.

Burnt Out, Like Toast In Obsidian Crumbs

What I felt the most since these stressful situations began to weigh on Kyle and me was the desire to hit pause and process what I was feeling while the world held still. You know? Just a moment, where you could feel without the expectation to be who you are and do the things others depend on you for. Even the little things, you depend on yourself to do. Of course, that feeling grows to a desire to stop the world for days, and escape to a zone where the stressful things can’t bother you. A yearning for the before and a hunger for the after, this is all resolved and back to normal. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the big emotions of personal things that you forget to have fun together. You forget to just be yourself. It’s a bizarre version of your life that doesn’t feel familiar, and I think after months of feeling like this, 2025 ended with me feeling chewed up and angry.

So why do we pretend like this is a normal state of being a responsible adult? Like if I hadn’t decided to stop drinking alcohol in 2021, this season would have been months of riding out a buzz, ignoring my problems, and choosing unhealthy coping mechanisms. Subbing in a source of temporary joy, depending on a thing or a feeling to get you through, is avoiding the inevitable mess that upset you in the first place. But I think this is the box we put ourselves in as adults, to stop from appearing weak or vulnerable. Substitute a drink for a shopping haul, sports betting, s*x, doom scrolling – what I’m talking about is far more common than we admit. So why do I feel so alone in this feeling?

It is still my present burden to bear, Kyle’s present burden to bear. Contrary to the calendar, your problems on Dec 31 are still there when you wake up on Jan 1. Doesn’t that suck? I felt myself wishing more than ever at the end of 2025 that the “fresh start” effect was real. Because life requires emotional endurance with no cap. That is quite difficult for us humans to do. It requires patience, hope, faith, self-control, gentleness, and love. We grow weary, we hide our struggles like they are something to be ashamed of, instead of a common part of life. We are odd creatures. That’s why I decided to share this, because I don’t think we discuss this enough, and I plan to talk about it more.

Marriage is hard, in more ways than I could even comprehend, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. As we are both kids of divorce, we stubbornly refuse to address the stress that is negatively affecting our relationship because to do so feels like we are already failing, but that’s not true. So I’m writing this for you, the one who feels the weight of their parents’ divorce on all of their relationships, like a curse you are inevitably going to repeat. It’s not true. Keep going and stop bracing for the bottom to drop out, like I waste time waiting for. We are survivors, and we are going to make it through the mess.

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