M. doesn't live here anymore so I rarely get to see her. My loss. I'm grateful she still works here by proxy anyway from Bloomington. When she comes to town we begin talking mid sentence. The relationships you count on. Maybe or maybe not a number of people would call me if they needed bail. Who would I call? She'd be topping my (extremely you're-probably-not-on-it short) list. I have a torrent of words for her: ... there was the dog fashion show and a man there reminded me of my grandpa because he truly loved it but the rest clapped when the clapping time came and I was wondering my god when does the requirement to affirm the world on cue end (??) while at that time I was so frightened that I'd stopped feeling frightened, that's how acute it was at that point, like an ice burn, and I could feel Aaron buzzing my phone in my pocket worried about me running late and what that might mean but I couldn't respond because I was middogshow and the pug was wearing a tootoo and I needed to concentrate on what I was doing because I do not offload the problem of dying onto low wage workers to relieve (!), even though I'm there here in this job to get more of the dying to clap, and oddly they're right that I'm the right person for that job, though I have yet to convince my mate that the existence of an untangled inner life is not a wrong nor is rubbing salve-of-pugs on it for that matter. We are all going to die, none of coping with fears backwards is a failure, I like a crock pot stew and there's no crime in that. No crime in loving the pug in drag or not, either damn way, or a non pug related Way entirely if you can find a Way to authentically Be and inevitably Not Be at all. And it has zero to do with the normative narrative of marriage in our culture for God's sake that what I want is to actually be with the man and have access to his inner life(s)... She laughs and understands what I am saying, so little appetite anymore for sorting anything to judge it rather than to just *get it*. Once or many times, small or big things happened to him, a can of spaghettios he hammered opened and ate cold (or whatever), made him (like M.) anxious in particular ways. And that's all. There is no guilt in it. If you're guilty or believe you're not either, condemnation on your lips, frankly that entire framework seems too beside the point to engage with at all. Language fails me in ways it didn't used to or I didn't notice, then I might bawl. Like a baby. Maybe that's a kind of rebirth, she wonders. Yea, maybe.

---------------------------------


"According to your questionnaire responses, your attachment-related anxiety score is 4.22, on a scale ranging from 1 (low anxiety) to 7 (high anxiety). Your attachment-related avoidance score is 3.44, on a scale ranging from 1 (low avoidance) to 7 (high avoidance).  We have plotted your two scores in the two-dimensional space defined by attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. Your approximate position in this space is denoted by the blue dot.

As you can see in this graph, the two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance can be combined to create interesting combinations of attachment styles. For example people who are low in both attachment-related anxiety and avoidance are generally considered secure because they don't typically worry about whether their partners are going to reject them and they are comfortable being emotionally close to others. Combining your anxiety and avoidance scores, you fall into the region of the space. Previous research on attachment styles indicates that preoccupied people tend to have highly conflictual relationships. Although they are comfortable expressing their emotions, preoccupied individuals often experience a lot of negative emotions, which can often interfere with their relationships."


---------------------


I'm teaching myself attachment theory. (You can take the test yourself here.) So I can go to the principles office today and teach it to her. Because although they teach you that stuff in shrink school, they don't stress it because mostly nothing can be done about how you feel only how you act, so says Patti, who has little defense of these facts of her profession. (I can't defend my profession either, but still, grrrrr). Those feelings can change a lot - this I know because my blue dot has moved significantly. Our marriage has rewired me. So I'm putting my foot down. Give me ANALYSIS, whether it's "in" or not in counseling these days (armscrossy). My anger used to scare me and is still one of the things in myself and others that I least like to be around. But it's nothing compared to Grief. If I was difficult back when I was a standoffish beotch with my 'dismissive avoidant' blue dot, I'm 'anxious preoccupied' hell to pay now.  I go looking for Aaron's unconscious like a woman looking for my pair of tweezers at the bottom of a drawer.  

But there are definite upsides to the work of intimacy! I now actually like Valentine's day, for instance, aka do-something-together-that-make-you-nervous day.

Find that because you're doing it together, it's not scary at all!