Hello from Post-Napland! Yeah, me and me usual aversion to naps has gone right out the window the past week or two; my rather achy body needs the rest, and I’m doing the wise thing and taking it. Thankfully, in spite of the usual poor results, it’s been mainly productive. My sleep hasn’t gotten too screwed up, my pain levels have gone down a tiny (tiny) bit, and well… hooray for all of that. I’m doing the best I can to take care of myself, and I think, I’m getting better at it one way or another.

Yesterday was Eurovision, which is probably one of my favorite things about living in Europe. It’s a silly good time with a lot of cheese, the occasional awesome song, and a lot of ‘Wait what why do people like this?!’ I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, to be honest — our plans involved a 4 hour round trip to see friends, as it was their turn to host (we try to see each other 4-5 times a year and alternate duties; the husband wanted to do a BBQ in July, so that set the order). Thankfully, we made it there and back in our individual pieces, and a good time was had. With the little one due next month, we’ve had to cancel our usual July-anniversary trip; it would be rather ass to expect my retirement-aged in-laws to cope with a freshly squeezed AND a four year old quite so soon for a weekend. So we’d taken a weekend off in April, but we still sort of needed to get away a bit.

Just being in a different place, especially one that my brain processes as safe… it’s good! I think that’s probably true of most people; after all, we’d not have our ‘usual’ hang-outs and the like if we didn’t deem them safe places. I have to wonder if that’s why it’s been easier for me to skip out on Stitch ‘n Bitch lately. Besides the pain factor of being so heavily pregnant and having been so for months, I’ve been off my meds since we switched pubs, so my anxiety has been severe at best. I certainly hope to make one of the next two sessions, since I’d like to see my local friends at least once before the baby comes, but… we’ll see. Taking care of myself, remember? If anxiety is a factor, then staying home and resting is probably the kinder thing to do in my current state. They’re not going to stop being my friends if I can’t make it until July or August, and it also spares me the trouble of dealing with well-meaning neurotypical folk denying my stress in experience in an attempt to be ‘supportive’.

Past that, just working on not being afraid, and not dwelling overly on the past. The initial glut of realization was a lot at once, and I’ve just been letting it sink in for now. I had a dream earlier that, I think, was my brain attempting to process further and let go of some things. Waiting for so long in the hopes my parents would change and actually give a crap about me and my hurts meant that I’ve only very recently learned the rudiments of letting go of things. I won’t beat myself over being so slow coming to it though, ’cause that serves no purpose — nolites te bastardes carborundorum. If I beat myself up for letting myself be poorly used, then that’s exactly what I’m doing to myself. It’s not my fault that I wanted to try and be loving and fair. What’s ‘my fault’ is that I AM a loving and caring person who wants to give people a fair shake, and I’ll happily own the ‘guilt’ of that all my days, hee hee.

For now, sweet blessed caffeine and further recovery from yesterday. While I spent most of the day to this point in bed resting to make up for the trip yesterday, I’m still feeling a bit rough. Emotionally stable, yes. Happy, yes. Physically? Well, this too shall pass!

Hope everyone out there is doing well.

<3