One would think that after the events of Wednesday, I'd have burned out my ability to experience anxiety for the next several weeks. Or at least, you know, a week.

Apparently not.

Whatever part of the brain controls the fight-or-flight response, I think I need to remove about half of it.

Donate it to the hungry zombies of LA.

It's a great idea because it's charity work and it calms me down, though somehow I don't think it will be like feeding the giraffes at the zoo.

Nervous, twitchy, imagining impending pain winging my way through time, or, rather, me speeding towards that point of impact that I've yet to determine its location on my route, but I know eventually it'll explode under me, emotional-mine.

So I breathe.

Sit here in this cheap office chair and breathe. Be in the moment.

This is what I wanted. I need to learn how to deal, which means I need to expose myself to those things that trigger my anxieties, because I can study the psychology of anxiety and fear all I want, but until I actually apply that knowledge, it's only hypothetical help.

Acceptance of pain.

But not bracing for impact. The best way to fall, I'm told, is to relax the body. The tighter you hold yourself, the more you control the fall, the more damage you will do to yourself.

So you'd think that evolution would have taught us this, that some sort of chemical make-up in the brain would be affected and each generation would have a larger population of people able to fall.

Maybe.

I need to go limp and relax. I need to accept. I need to force myself not to fight and attempt to remain in control.

Movies come to mind, with some wild pixie-like girl or a confident devil-may-care man and their romantic partners, coaching them to "just let go". Like it's so simple.

I don't know if that's Hollywood or if it's something I'm missing.

I found myself pulling back from him last night, as we were walking. Putting shields in place again, trying to emotionally withdraw, hardly even noticed I was doing it.

It's not good, being able to fool yourself like that. If I hadn't been noticing such earlier positive changes from last week, I likely would not have even felt my own distance from myself, from my feelings.

Sitting there, talking to myself, saying, "I know that you don't feel anything right now, you're entirely apathetic, but this will go away. I don't know what triggered it, but it will go away, so ride it out and snap back into it. You are not an ice princess, you are not a machine that can go through life like you have been, detached from all your partners, spending your days alone."

So I rode it out. I got back into it.

It's almost as though I have two grooves: the well-worn path I've taught myself to follow, and the one where it's so unused, unworn, my wheels simply jump off the tracks if I don't pay attention.

If I don't remind myself that it is okay to feel.

I know I've had that problem for so long, the easy stepping back from the self.

When I was younger, about 16 or so, I could shut off for weeks at a time. No emotion other than what I faked, what I felt was appropriate for the situation. The second something unpleasant started stirring within me, regret, remorse, fear, hurt, I'd swallow it and keep moving. It was the major reason I was able to do the things that I did. I never attached to anyone on an emotional level, I had no ability to bond.

...but I worked through it. A series of events left me barely standing and I realized that what I was doing, what I was able to do, was not a healthy thing. And I started examining and deconstructing the walls that did not even let me form the simplest of friendships on an emotional level.

So I'm much better than I used to be, though I'm still incredibly guarded. I honestly cannot say if the social loss of any of my friends would bother me for more than a day or two.

Sounds cold, doesn't it?

But people come and go. That's life. Events happen, people change, relationships start and your friends end up coccooning and never leaving the care of their partner or their house, really. They get married, they have kids, and they build up new social networks of other young, married couples who have kids, through pre-schools, daycares, youth soccer teams. They go off to school, they have a religious conversion, and suddenly you see them once a year, if that.

And then when you do see them... they aren't the person you once knew.

Which isn't bad... just different.

So I pulled back from GV8 last night, temporarily.

I felt it, identified it, rode it out. By the end of the evening, both of us exhausted due to his undefeatable libido on Sunday night/Monday morning, plus the miles of walking we did, I joined him in bed, asleep in minutes, hands locked together, curled into a ball with him around me.

My dragon. My beast.

Feeling better, feeling more connected and in the moment.

But, waking up, the feeling of our eventual demise as a... whatever we are... hit me. Loss that I have not experienced as of yet, but feeling it coming, much like the sun rising, causing you to feel the temperature to change before you can even see the light.

I try to be a realist.

I'm going to miss him.

But I'm going to do the best I can with the time we have. However many days or weeks that is before he decides we are not for each other.

Be brave. Be strong. Love without need of return.

Accept the fall, embrace the ground rushing up to meet you.

Breathe.