Waking up in now

I dreamed (dreamt?) about an ex last night. Not a big surprise - I took a journal with me over the weekend and after writing in it, turned back some pages and read. About him. And how I showed up so he could break my heart a second time. Seven years ago.

Seven years ago I was working at the Enterprise Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in part by the man who built Columbia, MD (and Ed Norton's step-grandfather or some such thing). I was discovering Fark and the 4um, which introduced me to some of the best friends I've ever had. I was disentangling myself (so I thought) from the most intense relationship of my adult life (to that point) with a man who was more soul-twin than soul-mate. I had tried dating some new guys but when the old one presented himself, it was hard to resist.

I don't know if it's like this for everyone, but dream emotions stay with me into the following day, clinging like the threads caterpillars stretch across paths through the woods or webs spiders spin between the car and my deck railing. And just as hard to shake off. I remember telling Pete that I'd had a dream wherein I was pissed off at him and asked him to forgive me if I tried to pick a fight.

When I read my old journals, they seem like the rantings of a teenager - everything is SO big and SO not like anything I've ever felt and SO...whatever. I was 32 seven years ago - old enough to have earned a little perspective. I hadn't felt anything like panic in the week since the end of my long-term relationship but started to get a little anxious after reading my journal. Nothing in my life seemed to last very long - social circles, jobs, relationships, etc. OMG! Alone again! What am I going to do? My life read like a series of choppy episodes rather than a coherent narrative and now here I am again - except where am I?

I am in the same job where I've for six years, in the same house where I've been for five, with the same cat I've had for - yikes, almost eight years? We're no longer dating but Pete and I still have a relationship, as evidenced by my urge to call him as soon as I heard Kyle Busch had been knocked out of the Cup race early only to find he'd already texted me about somebody finally winning the Nationwide race (somebody other than Busch). I've been going to meetings for 12 years and will keep doing so; I've been participating with my coven for four years; I've been taking hatha yoga and exploring a more Yoga (all eight limbs)-centric spiritual path for a year and a half.

I don't have to anticipate my whole world spinning out of orbit - I don't have to allow it to. Yes, this is an ending and thus a beginning, but not necessarily of everything I know. There's no need to go running back to my past in search of something that feels familiar. There's no need to panic. Everything is okay here and now and will continue to be so as long as I keep doing the next right thing.

And today the next right thing is to leave the sticky feelings from past in the past rather than allow them to get all over now. And maybe make myself feel better about me by re-reading some of this LJ, where backspace and delete make things look much less chaotic.