I wrote not long ago about time being a helix in my little corner of the world.

And, it is.

I had an ex try to connect with me on two separate platforms twice in the last month.

Once could have been a contacts sync.

Twice is not an accident.

In this particular case, I have zero desire to be connected to this particular individual. He’s earned blocks everywhere.

I am only connected social-media wise to one ex, a nice guy whose posts I never see.

I like it that way.

And as it happens, a trauma anniversary involving another individual I had a complicated relationship with is coming up, and because I mark my Novembers by what happened in November of 1998 involving that individual, it has been on my mind in recent days.

In some ways, it is a blessing that October was so rough emotionally because it means that November, however bad it might get emotion-wise, that the baseline is pretty darn low.

And, as I said, time is a helix, and I’ve decided it’s time to be real with myself.

Because the reality is: my brain thrives on drama in ways that are dangerous to my peace. And I am afraid of the predator of the November story, who is not the same individual who sought me out on social platforms (though I am afraid of that one, too). If I wasn’t afraid of him I wouldn ’t have frozen in person in October of 2025; I would have told him straight to his face what I think of him. And I certainly wouldn’t have collapsed into months-long psychosis after seeing him in December of 2024.

And, it is also legitimately true that I have genuine affection for the emotional labor I put into investing my time into him over two decades ago.

That’s the core root of the affection: I remember having to manufacture a physical attraction in those early few dates prior to the 1998 assault— not the kind of individual I would have sought out for a romantic relationship. I have affection for the part of myself that was willing to invest all of my emotional energy into a predator.

There, I said it.

But that might be the most honest breakthrough I’ve had in a long time: my latching onto the past, in whatever ways I tend to do it, is about my own hard emotional labor that had zero payoff, from back in the day, and in many ways was to my great detriment.

Because the reality is, in November guy’s case: I legitimately have an entirely different value system than that particular individual. We have vastly different tastes in pretty much everything other than music, and he weaponized some of my favorite songs in our time together, forever emblazoned in my mind in scenes not appropriate for description anywhere.

Predators do that sort of thing, in conditioning their prey. As a tip of the iceberg sort of thing, after they realize they have bagged an easy target. Specifically, opportunists do this.

Sort of like taking advantage of a 19 year old in psychosis.

Or taking advantage of that same woman, now a 45 year old trying to see if she can face her predator, when he gets her guard down in a parking deck.

Back to that time as a helix thing, though: what is it about the early 2000s? What in the world is it that 25 years ago keeps popping up?

The guy who sought me out on social platforms twice in the last month was from 2001.

Why does time loop in 20-25 year intervals, never quite catching up with itself?

And the half-time, the 12 years that I was incommunicado with each of them, individually?

Does time sort itself out in segments? Does growth happen that way? I really don’t know. In my experience growth is more exponential than linear.

I do know this: my husband is the only truly safe harbor I have felt in my entire life. And I’ve tested him in just about every way possible, to push even him away, to prove he is not the safe harbor he is.

So, this November, a new goal: a normal, ordinary November. No grand goals, no monumental markings of a grand day.

I know myself, and I’ll collapse at some point. Even the caveat there is an exertion of the control I feel not one iota of. Just like I remember collapsing under that medication desk at Willowbrooke in the first 24 hours after I realized what the true nature of that relationship with that man was, in 2010.

I trust no one. I’m sort of like Bess, our most skittish cat.

I don’t trust my own brain, I certainly don’t trust men, I don’t even wholly trust Jared. He’s the closest to trust I come. And I know it pains him, the doubt he sees in my eyes and body language sometimes.

But there’s something to that idea that my circling back to previous traumas is about paying homage to the emotional energy and affection I invested in individuals who went on to hurt me deeply.

Telling the stories over and over somehow legitimizes the deep feelings of loss that I feel not in having those individuals out of my life, not even in the fact that there will never be true justice (I happen to believe deep karma is indeed meting out in realtime)….

Somehow, I need to know that none of it was a waste.

I do feel like a deep waste of space a great deal of the time. Modern American society trains us all to measure value in people by job titles, by income achievements, by civic achievements and contributions.

Telling the stories of where my life deviated from the basic norms of the stereotypical woman from my hometown somehow rationalizes the value of my own existence.

And you know what? I don’t any longer wish to fit the mold. I’d like to live in less isolation, but otherwise my current life is a good one.

So maybe I’m on the way to acceptance and integration. Or maybe I’m fooling myself.

Either way, as I sit at Gallery Row typing this in to my Bear app with Jared directly across from me, glancing up from his own project to smile at me, something feels different this November for the first time since 2010.

And, looking at these two photos of myself, spaced 24 years apart, I’d have no words of wisdom for that younger version of myself. She did the best she could with what emotional reserves she had at the time.

But I do look at the contrast and see that my present self is finding a peace that eluded her, on my own terms. Even if it only appears in short bursts.

And, I’m here for it. Even if my life is lonelier than hers was, it is certainly less dramatic in all ways that are healthier.