iorena

Can I say something morbid? I obviously hope that when I have children, I get to raise them and see them become adults with their own children. But I know life doesn’t always work like that, and I could just die. In childbirth, in a car accident, I could get an illness, whatever. Could have babies and they could lose me young. “Do I wanna have this guy’s babies” is a filter that rules out 99.5% of men pretty quickly. “Would I trust this man to raise our babies well, to impart our values, support the little ones through grief if I died when they were young” has basically a 100% failure rate I guess I’ve never married a man, and perhaps the man I’d eventually trust like this has to be made, not found? As in, nobody knows me like this *yet* but they could; and it is theoretically possible to have such fortitude, grit, dedication, empathy; and a man who really loves me would be inspired to do right by our kids if tragedy struck; and years of loving & being loved by me would help him grow into a man who could take on such a role, right? Maybe this is premature. I need a couple more years before I’m even ready to have kids, so perhaps i’m just stoking anxiety for no reason. Setting an insane bar. Vividly imagining a tragedy that I obviously hope will not arise, which is generally not my M.O. for thinking about the future. I dunno. Sometimes I imagine having a conversation decades from now with my teenage daughter. If she looks at me and asks, mom, seriously, why’d you choose this guy? We don’t respect him, we can’t rely on him, he’s emotionally stunted. Why’d you make me get stuck with him? Why do this to us? Then I’d have failed. Really, that’d be my failure not his. For making an unworthy man their father, and forcing us to spend the rest of our lives making up for my mistake instead of being with a man we feel blessed to know. I pray for the latter, and for a long life with him and a bunch of sweet children, but I’d rest easier every night as a mother if I knew that my husband would do well raising our kids in my stead, if I were to stop breathing before the sun came up. God forbid I died and left my children under the care of an incapable man, I’d never sleep well, and I’d never forgive myself for gambling like this

automatically defaulting to self-blame can be a way of avoiding the actual feeling underneath. if you blame yourself then there's something you hypothetically could have done differently, some awareness you can improve upon, some flaw you can correct. it makes the painful incident both something you could have prevented and can prevent in the future – in other words, something you can control. painful emotions like grief, anger, shame are "simple" experiences, in that they are one-note, potent, and all-encompassing when they are allowed to fully arise without resistance. there is not much complexity there, no counterfactuals, no thought, no bargaining. just the feeling itself as you keel over sobbing in the kitchen. but surrendering into them feels like dying. it requires giving up all your rationalizations, defenses, and wrestling to face the fact that being a human just hurts like a bitch sometimes, and maybe there is nothing you can do about it. that there is sickness, and aging, and death, and even if you get really creative about all those, there will always be things outside your influence. there is no perfect control, no model with enough variables, no perfectly aware version of yourself who can foresee and circumvent the pain that arises from the simple act of living. the wheel turns, and life is a beast of fundamental uncertainty.

Which is the correct order?

Today I learned that the Germans literally call tortoises “shield toads”

how to know if you’re in the right relationship: every “make or break” experience makes you

This is a healing grid by Japanese artist Ryota Kanai. If you stare at the center, the irregularities start to heal themselves because your brain strongly prefers to see regular patterns.